Death to Wall-of Noise Shoe-Gaze!

The shoegazing sound is typified by significant use of guitar effects, and indistinguishable vocal melodies that blend into the creative noise of the guitars. 

Common musical elements of shoegazing consist of distortion, droning riffs and a "wall of sound" from noisy guitars. Typically, two distorted rhythm guitars are played together to give an amorphous quality to the sound. Although lead guitar riffs were often present, they were not the central focus of most shoegazing songs. [Wikipedia]  

 

The other night I was at a gig, the two bands were a blur as was their music and shall remain nameless, least I up-set the guilty.  

I wasn’t even that pissed, which is rather unusual.    

Both guitarists, I caught the end of band A and start of band B, possessed enough effects boxes of varying descriptions to make The Edge jealous.  

One had his rigs ‘nailed’ to a board, side by side for ease of use and to move from A to B.  

At $500 a throw there was a small fortune of technology on display, playing through amps high on reverb.    

And what does a small fortune of effects boxes get you over same a single ‘fuzz box’ unit? 

Say a better sound for the audience? 

What say a discernible difference between the varying devices?   

Perhaps a significant marketable differential for the band in question?  

Well no. 

It was a wall of reverby, wahy guitar sound punctuated by a wailing bass-line.   

Not to be outdone the bass players having plugged in their respective instruments into an effects box of some persuasion.  

The overall sound was filtered into homeopathic percentages. 

Don’t ask me to tell actually what any of the songs were about. 

It was too loud to tell, people looked like stunned mullets, a super 8 movie of 1950’s LSD experiments.     

After less than an hour it actually got annoying as each song drifted seamlessly into the next like a grunge version of a Yes album.  

So I departed.  

My cranium stopped reverberating two days later.  

To be fair the bar sold ear-plugs and there’s a message in that.

 

Footnote: I wrote this sometime last year, it got buried and dug-up.  

What qualifies as ‘Alternative Rock Music’ these days?

The term ‘alternative’ is one of the most over-used terms in music.

Bands like REM have been described as alternative, its meaning diluted to the point it is itself now virtually redundant, self-prescribed.   

‘Alternative’ to what?  

Contestants off The X-Factor?  

Neil Diamond? 

 Alternative to me is something like Throbbing Gristle or Einstürzende Neubauten.  

Bands that explore musical soundscapes that set themselves apart from their contemporaries, set-out to be different damn the audience numbers, record sales and media write-ups.     

Try and sound different, simply because they desire to do so. 

One of the dictionary meanings of the word is after-all: ‘Existing outside traditional or established institutions or systems’.   

Can the term in its rawest form be attributed to Soundgarden, Linkin Park and All American Rejects – the first names that appear on google when you type in ‘alternative rock band’? 

All these bands are generic, have peers, been there done that.   

Who were the peers of Devo when they first came out?     

Who else sounds like Radiohead these-days?  

Being a punk or death metal band doesn’t mean you are alternative.    

Punk and Metal are fairly main-stream and have been about for ages, seen little movement away from the original template set 30/40 years ago.  

Most parents of teenagers probably have a Black Sabbath or Deep Purple album lurking somewhere. 

Nor does wearing a mask, chopping things apart with a chainsaw on stage actually qualify a band as being alternative. 

Only your music can do that.   

 

 

Quint Baker Appreciation Society

I first heard of Quint via the magnificent Natures Worst (NW) series. 

His bio reads: New Zealand’s weirdest songwriter.  

A quick gezz at his Flickr site shows the Aucklander is more than just an avant-garde musician. 

Painter, poet, photographer and You Tube producer par excellence. 

The play on the iconic 4 Square Grocer and the green Lenin head on the NW3 CD are all of his work.  

Sadly for Mr Baker his output is largely ignored, even by the arty-farties.  

Piss all hits on quality musical output like this is a cruel injustice to his talents, what I for one see and hear in front of me.

 

 

Still, I try not to fixate too much, embroil myself in negativity, when it comes to New Zealanders attitudes to the arts in general.

Doing so would get me joining the 1 in 5 on some sort of anti-depressant.  

Music is mostly my vent and I see a vast array of talent that is all but ignored, north to south.  

Musical ‘talent’ is seemingly hedged to your ability to sing karaoke style in front of a camera, look good in make-up and the lynch-pin: attracting enough pubescent girls to masturbate over you.    

This is my humble cry from ‘the wilds’ for Kiwi’s to switch channel now and again.      

 

The one I watch is much more interesting.

 

        

Buzzcocks at The Dux 30/04/2013

 

Christchurch Obliterates Vorn.

The night was advertised as ‘Vorn Obliterates The Dux!’ 

Oh if only! 

I really need to get checked out at 52 for dyslexia, or is this just a case of spoonerising the words Christchurch, Vorn and Obliterate in the same sentence?    

 

What wasn't confusing was the lack of audience.

Christchurch music goers proved to be the most fickle in the land by lounging in front of telly’s on a nothing Wednesday night instead of getting off the chuffs and seeing one of N.Z’s most talented artists and tightest, harmonised groups.   

“I can’t wait for the city to be re-built” is a constant reverb around Christchurch. 

Well the fucking Dux has been re-built you prats, bigger and better than its predecessor and you still can’t be fucked.  

Cantabs apathy means bands give Christchurch a miss, pubs don’t make money, staff aren’t employed, taxis aren’t called and the place goes down the tubes with cries of “Help us Mr Key” when the solution to the re-build, rejuvenated city lies far closer to home, watching re-runs of Coro Street.    

A two year old earthquake doesn’t wash it as an excuse either.   

If having a few beers and watching an entertaining, up-lifting act like Vorn plus side-kicks isn’t a good enough panacea to ones woes in itself you need the quack or your local tinny house to prescribe something heavier, post haste.    

And whilst I’m venting it doesn’t help the cause of attracting acts from outside Christchurch by The Darkroom deciding their staff’s pet-project band should have an impromptu gig on the very same night.   

The shameless folk who missed Vorn and Pals on 13^th Feb 2013 should at least absolve themselves of the guilt they now carry by going to Vorns Bandcamp site and downloading an album of theirs.

 

Die! Die! Die! Live at WunderBar Lyttelton 26th Dec

VINEYARD CONCERTS IN THIS COUNTRY SUCK

Until recently, 15^th December 2012 to be exact, I had never attended a music concert held in a Vineyard.  

Perhaps my neurosis was not on par with other Kiwis my vintage because wine vineyards seem to be the ‘in’ place these-days when it comes to open-air concerts in N.Z.   

I had previously been well out of the loop confining my concert going to the strangest of venues – a concert hall.    

On Saturday 15^th I tasted (pun intended) my first experience of bands plonked among the vines, deckchairs, blankets and pissed kindy mums.   

Devo, Simple Minds and the Church playing Villa Maria in Auckland. 

If this was a bottle of over-priced vintage I would have spat it out, protested to the waiter it was corked – not that I even drink wine – I’m way too unsophisticated to waste money on that muck.   

I’m not taking away anything from the bands or the sound on the night. 

Devo had lost nothing from the last time I saw them 25 years ago.

Simple Minds were on key, played too little of their ‘interesting’ earlier stuff for my liking.  

The Church were always a bit soppy for my tastes but to be fair to their fans they put on a great performance.  

However all of these bands performances were impinged by the incessant chatter from the crowd.  

Soon after The Church twanged their first chord I learnt a sizeable chunk of the crowd was only there to sing-along to the one or two songs they could vaguely remember from their last listen.

That was when cars came with cassette players.  

It may as well have been the races at Ellerslie or Addington as far as they were concerned. 

Now I’m not adverse to getting pissed at concerts – even if the beer offerings on this occasion was isolated to the sponsors watery, sugary lager offering – but at least I have respect for people who paid money to listen to the bands by keeping my trap shut.  

This was thought of as more of a social occasion for many rather than a musical occasion.  

A chance for four-wheel-drive owning mums to compare kids reports and government property values, eat cheese and crackers from well-appointed picnic baskets.          

A grand opportunity for their similarly over-dressed husbands to get-together, natter about sailing on the harbour earlier in the day, golf handicaps whilst their kids, yes couples turned-up with brats, could kick an empty wine bottle about getting bored shitless with their parents taste in music. So much for it being a R18 gig.    

I would doubt it most punters at Villa Maria would even own an album by Devo or Simple Minds.  

Conclusion: If you are vaguely into music, truly love a band Vineyard Concerts are going to piss you off, better left alone unopened on the shelf.  

                                                      SEE WHAT I MEAN ANNOYING?!