When we eventually went up the steps, the support act were playing their last song and it would only be a matter of time before Custom Kings took over the stage and had the floor of the Troubie bouncing like I have never seen it bounce before. It was a great night with good tunes and a happy crowd.

Custom Kings, The Troubadour, 10/04/08 Gig Gallery

Grassroots Street Orchestra (herein referred to as GSO because that is a whole lot easier to say and makes me think of a SO when I say it) and Mister Laneous & The Family-Yah (herein referred to as Mr Laneous) played a late Tuesday night gig this past Tuesday and even though I stayed out way past my bed time (am not a uni student any more) as the show started a little bit later than they tend to it was worth every bit of it.

I had seen part of a set by Mr Laneous a couple of weeks ago when they were playing a Sunday afternoon slot at Rics and I had liked what I had heard for sure. This time I got to see a whole set and it was like I am tempted to say a spoonful of sweet chilli philly, though it was a more grittier feel than that. One thing I did make a special note in my diary of was this song which I will call Going Crazy/Crazy for You, which was a pretty sweet duet affair with Mr Laneous and Georgia Potter. Really wish now that I had taken more photos of them but I was a bit slack and I made up for it with photos of GSO.

GSO.
I remember the first time I saw an “ad” for a GSO gig in a Time Off and thinking that sounds like a pretty cool band and I should get up and go to the gig. For some reason I didn’t. I wish I had now because between then and when I first saw GSO live in January, I have missed a lot of opportunities. That is life though and as much as I wish I could go back and start things over I can’t so I move forward.

GSO was raw music, words, reason. It was not really about a band playing to an audience, it was a much more fluid environment with the band feeding off the energy of the crowd and the crowd absorbing every word, note and arm waving of GSO.

Side note: Something else I have come to realise in the last week about local acts over national acts and even more so over international acts is that whilst the sound of a local act may not be as polished or the stage show as an international, I think given the option nine times out of ten now I would pick seeing a local act as they live in the same city as you. They have to deal with the same politics, events, landscape as you and it is through the music that they express how they see it. I rarely accept friend requests on myspace from bands that are not local. I have so many ideas to develop and enrich the local music scene (in fact I have a notebook full) and one day I hope I am able to get at least some of them up off the ground.

Back to GSO. Apart from having total respect for how Surya wraps his tongue around those words, it is just the right music for life at the moment.

Gig Gallery

I really need to start writing these posts down on paper when I get home or the morning after to see if I can get more of the words and feelings out of my head instead of sitting here looking at a computer screen trying to figure out how I want to describe something which seems to happen more often than I want it to.

Back to Rics though. It was a delightful close to the weekend. It wasn’t packed to the rafters but it was quite pleasantly full. Just that right number of people. You know how you sort of forget how much you enjoy a band as for whatever reason? Or you forget just how great their music is? Or you forget just how much emotion is in the music? That was Sunday night. Or do you ever think about what it would have been like back in the day, watching those now big artists of the 70′s doing the bar scene? Sitting there thinking to yourself that you are watching something special and that one day, hopefully sooner rather than later that more people in the world will know too? I like those gigs. Gigs where the guitar is just right, the lyrics have meaning and everything clicks together? Or acts that even when sick still have a stage presence that holds the attention of everyone in the crowd or acts that look genuinely pleased and happy to be on stage.

Sunday was one of those nights. Banawurun & Georgia Potter both were delightful. I can not recommend enough clicking those links and listening to them on myspace.

In a dream world I floated out of Rics, although in the real world it was a whole lot more like one foot after another slowly, thinking more about not stumbling/tripping over something rather than the magical music.

This is possibly my favourite image of the night, it was also the first photo I took. It was nearing the end of Georgia’s set and I had spent a lot of time looking at the reflection on the door. Wanting to do something different I took a photo.

Banawurun.

Georgia Potter.

Gig Gallery

I probably should start off with Sunday.
I had one goal for the arvo and that was to see Yeo and The Fresh Goods at Rics and that I did. Right next door at Kaliber, Nightillion were doing there Sunday afternoon sessions/jam thing. Fusing all sorts of musical goodness together, it was nice. Meanwhile at Rics, Mr Laneous (pron. similar to miscellaneous) were taking care of getting the arvo started. A wander round The Valley and then it was time for Yeo and Co to fill the stage at Rics and play to a bar full of Shiny Happy People. I was fancy free and relatively footloose or really it was a Sunday where we weren’t’ going to The Farm as Mum had taken Grandad road tripping and left us all at home. It is a catch 22 of sorts. I would love to go more of the Sunday arvo session at Rics/Powerhouse/etc but Sunday arvos/night is the time we spend with Grandad and I am smart enough to know that those days are a whole lot more numbered than Sunday arvo sessions at Rics. It was so great to see Yeo play live. Tom and Tiana were outside and asked me what sort of music Yeo plays, I described as sort of electro reggae, I much prefer the three myspace genres; French pop / Punk / Reggae. Much better.

Yeo, (click image for the gig gallery).

Random Valley Shot. 56/366

Sunday evening it was the Creative Vibes shindig at The Troubie, not much of a turnout but it was still good, the couches were “pulled” from the walls and arranged in a few more social friendly rows near the stage, made it feel even more like a lounge room than it normally does. The bill for the night was Tess Henderson (what a voice), Tom Woodward (see x previous posts on Tom) and Justin Grounds (technically interesting but I was too tired to appreciate it). The light seemed to be at half strength to what it normally is at the Troubie which was a bit bleh for me.

Tess’s piano player, (click image for the gig gallery).

Random Desk Shot.

Monday. 57/366.
Yep Christmas Cards are still up, it is only February (when this photo was taken) after all.

Tuesday. 58/366.
I was really tempted not to take a photo on Tuesday, was just so tempted to chucking this whole project in but I took a photo of my saeng cover, I love those flowers dearly. Yay for Ikea.

Wednesday night. 59/366.
Andrea and I went for fish (Barramundi-Andrea, Calamari-Me) and chips and a movie at Portside (Hamilton). We had 1hr 45mins between when the fish and chip shop closed and when our movie started. Granted we probably didn’t leave the fish and chip shop till a good 25mins after it closed, it meant we had quite a bit of time to laze around by the river talking, laughing, chatting and playing. The movie we went to see was Charlie Wilson’s War, which was not as funny as I thought it would be.

Thursday night I went to photograph Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Manchester Orchestra at the Zoo. I met Alain Bouvier, that was a laugh. I started talking to one of the other photographers, he said he was French etc etc, I asked if he knew Ange Takats, he said of course and we laughed, we knew of each other through Ange, that was a laugh. Music wise I preferred Manchester Orchestra over CYHSY, I left shortly after our three songs were up for CYHSY. I think that explains it.

Manchester Orchestra, (click image for the gig gallery).

Drinking Receptacles. 60/366

Friday was a hell of a day at work, just never seemed like I was going to get my work done. I got it all done though.
Friday night I went out to dinner at Sitar with Andrea and some of her high school friends who I had met round her parties before.
80% of us had the deluxe banquet. I was glad I wore a dress as I wasn’t unbuckling a top button like the others. Oh it was good, of the four curries we picked, the only one which we all disliked was the Bengal Prawn Masala most likely because the prawns were like rubber. The Lamb Korma was oh my and don’t get me started on the Peshwari Naan. I could eat that for breakfast, lunch and tea for the rest of my life.

That brings us to today, Saturday which will very much be another blog post as that has photos, photos, photos of the spires going on St John’s.

I went to Rics, for a Sunday arvo session. It was quite comfortably filled, and every single person had this smile on their face.

I sat round the dimly lit Troubie whilst it was bright sunshine outside. That was weird. Waiting for people to turn up.

I watched a group of people turn the Troubie into a lounge room and listened to a few songs.

I shook my head at boy who has hair like an Icelandic sheep and smirked with a girl who I should always be sitting down when talking to.

Today though.
I set the alarm for an extra 15 minutes.

My lunch was two matching containers of tupperware, one with a chopped up mango (honey gold thank you) and the other with grapes (green please).

I am reading Kabul in Winter. Which must be the fifth, I think, book on Afghanistan post 2001 that I have read in the past few weeks. It is really good to see how a lot of the main people and history are written in the different books.

I have numerous photos that I could illustrate this post with but strangely I have no desire to put photos with these words.

I watched the last episode of Alias season 1. I had forgotten there were only five seasons, I kept on thinking there were seven and I had the timeline stretched out a lot longer in my mind.

I just found out that one of the girls from high school who I have probably kept the most contact with works in a building across the street from where I work. We catch the bus from the same stop each afternoon. weird.

I haven’t taken my photo for today yet.

Tomorrow.
I have a bunch of kids enlisting. That means I get to wrap med docs in brown paper (it was that, not the view that cinched me taking the job). Every week or so it is like Christmas. Wrapping all those “presents”.

I will make biscuits when I get home.

I will wake up at 6am and get out of bed at 6:03am.

I will watch an hour of something trashy on TV and shake my head the entire time at myself for watching it.

I well who knows what else I will do because tomorrow is tomorrow.

I took this photo as my day 21 photo as I left the concert and headed back to the car.

I am about to go to bed but I have to take today’s photo yet. I don’t know what it will be yet. I am not going to pike though on the 366 days no matter how tempted I am to just fall into bed now.

Is this not the most delightful photo? It is currently my desktop background, thanks big brother.

I have watched parts of Kalahari on the ABC the last two Sundays. I could say Damm five hundred times over after watching that. Just the sheer amount of wildlife. Seeing those clouds of birds or the Acacia trees covered in bird nests or those herds of Zebras. I just can not fathom the sheer numbers. It was breathtaking.

Yesterday morning, Mum and I dropped Matthew at work and headed off to the Hotel Broadway markets. We parked the car at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs and walked the rest of the way to the Hotel Broadway. It is a relatively small market but it was good. We got some Mangrove Honey We walked home via the specialist food shops on Balaclava st, which open at 7am every morning! We had a good walk, window shopping, garden shopping, people shopping watching and I had fun taking some photos.

The Markets

The Gabba

The Cliffs

The Story Bridge

The Valley

Windsor War Memorial

The Park

I had a poke round Newstead on my way into The Valley scoping out some places I want to take photos of, walked round the Valley/New Farm observing the street life or more likely getting some exercise since the last week of rain has killed the morning exercise. Another night in The Valley. Another night at the Step Inn. The stage lights at the Step Inn work ok for your standard rock band with three or four members, however when you start putting reggae bands up there with perhaps six, seven, eight members the light just doesn’t work. It means that you get a number of decent photos of anyone who is in the centre front of the stage and the success rate diminishes as you move away from that. Back to photos and music though as that is what we are here for.

Shisha.
A jam band that was there just to provide some background music. A guy jumped up from the audience with a Sax to join in, after a while, I realised that I knew him. It was Jonathan Sri. He was three years below me at school but we were both in the various bands at school together, although then he was playing Clarinet and I was able to hit him on the head from where I was sitting with my Bassoon (sigh I miss her). Was nice to be able to catch up and do the required high school gossip exchange/catch up. Back to Shisha, it was fun stuff and a good start to the night.

Cool Calm Collective.
The horns section never appeared and keys lady was late. It worked though (of course). Some of those lyrics are stuck in my head again. A nice change to Don’t Mess With The Dragon that I have had up there since April. This was a “shot that I have wanted to take for a while” and given the light I am pretty happy with the result, band framed by crowd.

De Jah Groove.
Having seen this guys a couple of times in the last few months I had a photo planned. A photo that I have attempted to take the last few times but have not been happy with the result. I was prepared for it this time. The photo was going to be Dave throwing the Shekere up in the air. I was waiting. I was 99.9% that it would happen. However they didn’t end up playing the song so I didn’t get the photo. I was talking to Dave afterwards and mentioned it, he told me that it was on the set list and they just didn’t play it. Next time I will get it.

Grass Roots Street Orchestra.
GRSO were something. It was reggae with some hip-hop elements and I really loved it, which bowled me for six.

1:10am, the music is over and the instant mood swings security guy starts kicking anyone out who is not in a band. We all promptly step outside and some of the Poetikool Justice and some other guys start a beatboxing circle after a long while someone decides to take the next step and some words, it was really impressive. More chatting and then it was time to bid the St Pauls Terrace farewell.

A crowd shot

The rest of the images are located in a gallery here.

I like the Step Inn in theory, I like that they are booking a very wide range of shows from folk to dub to pyschobilly and everything in between. I have a love/hate relationship with the lights though. Sometimes they are excellent, sometimes they are good, other times they are crap and it changes drastically between bands on a night. Cactus Cadillac were the first band and they had dim blue lights on their faces but normal sunlight lights at waist level. For the other bands though it moved to just normal sunlight lights as the whole lighting which was focused at the very front of the edge of the stage which meant that most time band members were in the fall-off, whilst the instruments were in the full light. It was interesting. That is why most of these photos are just photos and nothing more. I would take red Zoo lights over patchy lights any day.

Cactus Cadillac.
Cactus Cadillac is fun. They are boys who have slept on our floor numerous times over. Whilst Carter may be my primary little brother, Tom and Yuki are round often enough as well that they are just part of the family. I enjoyed the set, it was by no means mind blowing it was only their 2nd gig and Carter was distracted by the cricket on the TV at the back of the room apart from that, they are doing what they enjoy

The Dead Ringers.
I only saw a little bit of this set as I went over to Tounge and Groove at West End to see The Chocolate Strings (damm great music) with Clare as her farewell before she headed to Washington DC, where she will spend the next 9 weeks or so as an intern for Massachusetts Democrat Congressman, John Tierney. Jealous? yes. The Dead Ringers were a band that I found on myspace looking for local alt-country bands so I was surprised seeing them at a Bad Moon Show but they do have a fair bit of rockabilly elements in their alt-country.

Foghorn Leghorn.
Some nights you just need some Ska to keep you going and Foghorn Leghorn are always there to provide. They have this absolute cracker of a songs about Emo kids and cheering them up, there is actions that go with it, it is pretty darn amusing.

The Bad Moon Company.
What do you if a few songs into the set the double bass gives up the ghost? You become a rockabilly covers band whilst people attempt to fix the double bass. You get it working, you go back to playing your own blend of rockabilly/pyschobilly. Then the double bass croaks it again, repeat steps from before. It croaks again. You play it to the best you can. Everyone goes home early because it just doesn’t want to work. That was quite sad as I was looking forward to a big night of Bad Moon Co goodness.

To see the rest of the images from the night go here – A Very Voodoo Christmas

I went with my little brothers and one girlfriend. There was Carter ambushing Kate, yeah that Kate as in Futon store Kate. There was a guy who was in my year at school breaking his nose in the 2nd song. There were the people who smiled at me when they saw my camera and let me pop in front of them or forming a guard round me to prevent stage divers landing on me. There was milling on Ann St after the show whilst Matthew talked to the various randoms/scene kids.

It was a night which was a good night. The support bands were good, The Zoo wasn’t as hot as it normally gets.

The supports were The Gift Horse and The Black Market.

Then it was The ‘Souls.

You can view the rest of the photos over here at Flickr

Friday night. Another night in this not so sleepy city. Relishing that sometimes mellow, sometimes rock reggae sound floating out into the night air. The Dé Jah Groove boys were in town to release their debut album Rock-Bottom Jackpot and had pulled out two of the staples of the local scene The Cool Calm Collective and Heavyweight Champions and an up and coming band The Colour who were mighty impressive.

The venue was of course The Step Inn, in some sense the little train that perhaps just could of the Brisbane venues. It used to be the Shamrock, a place on the fringe of the “The Valley” which was more of a shall we say public bar establishment than a place to go to see fine live music. The last year though the Step Inn has really “stepped up” and became almost a go to venue. They play host to a wide variety of bands from pyschobilly to reggae dub to metal and I have a feeling that after we all stop saying, it is still the Shamrock, we will realise what a treasure it just might become though it has a lot of work to go yet in improving the venue.

It doesn’t have the nicest lighting mostly due to the design of the stage and the room in general. The lighting though does change a lot depending on the band that is playing which is a lot more than can be said for some of the other live music venues round The Valley. Friday night though I was at the extremes ISO 3200, lenses wide open round the 1.8-2.2 stop and my shutter staying at 1/200 because other wise there was no hope in hell of getting crisp photos because unlike some of your more folky acts. Those boys like to move around a bit. Back to the show though. It was a nice night, talked to a few people, missed catching up with some people who I had wanted to say hi to, running into some girls from Caloundra the other weekend, taking photos and enjoying that sound. I have to give it to the Dé Jah boys for playing a nice long set which will stay in my little memory box for the weeks to come.

This is one of my favourite tracks off the album – One Drop High. Enjoy.
[See post to listen to audio]

some photos of course. The rest are over here in a Flickr set

The Cool Calm Collective

Heavyweight Champions

The Colour

Then we met up with Georgie for a quick stroll on Oxford St, a browse at Riverbend books and a bite to eat (the above picture, which we split into three parts). Then it was back on the cross river ferry to Tenerife and the bus into the Valley where we browsed in Mod Cons and then finally the bus home.

A very nice day indeed.