JANUARY 14 2010 THE WELLINGTONS REVIEW

THE WELLINGTONS

THE WORKERS CLUB

MELBOURNE

THUR JAN 13 2010

The WELLINGTONS from Melbourne are a power pop band. Actually no they are not. They are a really FANTASTIC power pop band from Melbourne. They have fantastic songs, full of sugar and sunshine. They have fantastic hooks and harmonies, riffs and catchy sing-a-long lyrics. They look cool. They wear hip indie kid clothes. They leap about the stage; they look like they are having fun. AND they can really play.

The band is tight, harmonies bang on and they have great handclap bits! They have recently had the infectious Come Undone all over Triple J and Rage, and the previous single Song for Kim, has one of my favourite all time couplets in it.

You’re the girl that I want at my party

You’re so cool you probably know karate

They play to adoring fans in Spain, USA, Japan and Europe. Their songs have been used on the US sit-com hit How I Met Your Mother. So why are there only forty people here tonight? Buggered if I know. It’s week two of their four week residency at the Workers Club (formerly the Rob Roy) in totally hip Brunswick Street. And there is a small but appreciative crowd here. They know all the words. They sing along. They don’t dance though. Later I am told indie kids don’t dance at gigs in Melbourne, only at indie clubs. I am sorry to tell you non-dancing Melbourne Indie kids, you are getting this bit totally wrong. The Wellingtons I saw tonight were a MEGA-BLAST of pure power pop kinetic energy. Just have a dance – you’ll be glad you did.

The five piece consists of Zac Anthony (guit/voc), Kate Goldby (bass/voc), Koji Asano (guit/voc), Gustav Lindstrom (drums) and the keys tonight are admirably taken care of by Anna Dobbyn, til their regular person returns from … well, elsewhere.

With three albums to cherry pick from tonight they concentrate on their latest Heading North for the Winter. With Zac leaping round and climbing onto speakers, doing big jumps at the end of EVERY SONG (pretty much), The Wellingtons encapsulate everything great about this music. Yeah there aren’t a thousand people in the room, but they play like there is. They crank through these pop gems like they are ploughing through a box of crème centred chocolates, savouring each one before picking up the next, consulting the guide on the lid and devouring it with gusto. Come Undone is early in the set and sets pulse’s (if not feet) racing. On & Off is terrific and the live favourite Freak Out is enthusiastically received. The incredible I Get My Heart Broken Every Day was also a set stand out.

There is a line in their song For Friends in Far Away Places that goes:

It’s not that we are bored here,

It’s just that people who like our songs live far away

The danger is that we will lose these guys to a more power pop friendly nation. I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope the good people of Australia embrace all that is good and glorious about these kids from Melbourne and hang onto them with a big fuzzy bear hug.

Ian Bell

PS: See the accompanying POWER POP rant over at my other blog thing at

http://djianmaiden.blogspot.com/

JANUARY 11 2020 My favourite jokes at the moment.

My favourite jokes at the moment.

Q : WHATS BROWN AND RHYMES WITH SNOOP?
A : DR DRE

Q : WHAT IS GRANDMASTER FLASH'S FAVOURITE WEBSITE?
A : WIKI WIKI WIKI WIKI WI WI KI KI PEIDA

Q : WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIGER WOODS & SANTA CLAUS?
A : SANTA STOPS AT THRE HO'S

Two pirates are talking and Pirate number one says to Pirate number two.
"I like those ear rings you have there"
"ARRRR, thank you sir"
"Where did you pilage them from" says pirate one.
"I got them from the two dollar shop" says pirate #2
"Thats not bad for a buccaneer"

JANUARY 10TH 2010 WE'RE HAVING A HEATWAVE

Hot enough for you?

Is there a more annoying phrase when you are in the middle of (yet another) heatwave.

We had seven days of 40+ degree days back in November. Would the Global Warming deniers please now shut the hell up.

I get really angry when i see the weather for Australia and Adelaide is hotter than Alice Springs and Darwin. I mean WTF Mother Nature? Alice Springs is in the DESERT! Darwin is up near the equator in the sub-tropics. So it's blistering hot up there right? No people from the Northern Territory come to Adelaide when they need to go somewhere to get a bit of sun.

I notice (mainly through various Facebook updates from my pals in the UK) that when we are having a run of five days of 40 degrees here, they seem to be having a run of five days of -2 + snowdrift weather in the UK.

I like it when it's hot, 32 is good. But 42, 43, 44, is just taking the piss. It's impossible to do anything useful even with (an admittedly struggling) air conditioner. it's hard to do any work. It's hard to do no work. It's hard to sleep.

Actually I think I'll go and get an ice cream.

Global warming solved.

JANUARY 9TH 2010 HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELVIS

Elvis Presley would have turned 75 year old yesterday if he had lived.

I wonder what he would have been like.

Would he have had gastric by pass surgery and had everything tightened and lifted.

Would he still be playing Vegas.

Would he have gotten to tour the world, something he never got to do (because of that asshole manager Col Tom Parker).

Would Rick Rubin coaxed him into the studio to make a series of critically acclaimed albums of Elvis doing songs by Nick Cave, The Pixies, Sonic Youth and Morrissey?

Would he have got the chance to make any movies where he could actually use his under-utilised acting talent?

I finally got to go to Graceland last year. As a life long Elvis fan it was pretty mind-blowing. That is a blog for another day though.

Today I just thought I'd say Happy Birthday Elvis

JANUARY 8TH 2010 DEATH TO ALL BUTT METAL

One of the things some people will be unaware of about me, is my love of 1980's Cock Rock.

Back in the day, in the heady days of the early 1980's, it wasn't my biggest priority. I was far too busy dividing my time between other types of music. I was entranced by foppish sensitive types like the Smiths, Aztec Camera and Go-Betweens. I loved all the new garage rock, much of it Aussie, Hoodoo Guru's, the Stems, Lime Spiders, etc. I loved 'alternative' bands like The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Pixies, Wall of Voodoo. And I loved a lot of mainstream music Duran Duran, Culture Club, Prince, etc. It's not that I didn't like metal. I'd been a Kiss fan since 1975, and I always recognised a good song when I heard one. I was always attracted to the theatrics of Metal. The costumes and the posturing. It was very obvious with Kiss, but also AC/DC, Iron Maiden all had a uniform of sorts. When 'hair metal' raised it's highly bouffanted head in 1983, I was just looking elsewhere. I did however love Poison, Motley Crue, Girlschool, Lita Ford, Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, etc. I lost a bit of interest when that stuff gave way to Winger and stuff like that. I also didn't take to Guns'N'Roses. Not at all. I thought they were poseurs. I thought their whole 'I'm so wasted man' thing was tired and I'd seen their whole shtick before, done much better. I did think 'Welcome to the Jungle' was a great song and a good riff, and a couple of others were good songs. but at the time I wasn't into it. Was probably more interested in chasing up lightning Seeds singles on import. my attitude to Gunners changed when i had Andromeda Music. We had a GNR Pinball machine, and it was a brilliant game. All the way through various targets would cue bits of GNR songs. You'd lose the ball down the side and it would go 'WELL WELL WELL MY MICHELLE', or if you were doing well it'd play 'Mr Brownstone'. Suddenly one day i realised that I had been missing out all this time and went and bought the entire catalogue that day. I have never looked back.

These days my interest in metal is a considered one. I don't like it all. But I will happily go and see Motley Crue, LA Guns, anything to do with Kiss, Sebastian Bach from Skid Row, WASP, etc. I will never get a tattoo of the warrant logo and I would never claim to be HM hardcore, but i know my stuff to some degree and get along well with a lot of the people who go to those gigs. I have conversations with those guys i never have anywhere else. We talk about the next Alice Cooper tour or whether we are going to Melbourne to see brilliant Swedish Metal band Hardcore Superstar. I really enjoy those nights.

For the last few years I'd been hearing about this thing in LA called Metal Skool. Basically it was a cock rock cover band that played on the Sunset Strip every Monday night. It had built up a huge following and it was packed every week. These guys would get up and play Kick start My Heart, Nothing But A Good Time, Hot For Teacher, etc, and they'd be all dressed in spandex and huge hair, doing scissor kicks and so on. The other thing they recreated was that 1985 Strip attitude. Part of why those bands were popular back then was this crude, rude, sexist and hedonistic behaviour that was celebrated by the bands and fans alike. That kind of behaviour is quite rightly frowned upon in this day and politically correct age. Except at the Key Club in LA every week. They are up there coaxing girls to flash their breasts and talking about sex with groupies, picking on people in the audience with the most PC taunts and jibes imaginable. People just LOVED it, word spread like wild fire and it became the hottest ticket in LA. Soon celebrities and musicians were coming down to see what all the fuss was about. If somebody famous was in the house the band would ridicule them til they got up to sing with them. That lead to more people going and so on.

Eighteen months ago they changed their name to STEEL PANTHER and when we were in the USA last April we arranged our schedule so I could go to the Key Club. My wife (to be at that stage) had no interest in going to see a bunch of sexist metal heads, but decided it might be fun at the last minute and off we went to Sunset Strip. We got there and bought tickets but were told Steel Panther didn't come on til midnight. So we went wandering around the strip, going to Grumman's Chinese, The Roxy, the Viper Room etc got my photo taken by Tom Jones Hollywood star and with Jesus Christ (long story). Shortly after we got back the place filled up with girls in spandex and lingerie, and guys in spandex and lingerie and lots of big hair, some real some fake. After a couple of support bands (including one from Melbourne i have NEVER heard of), the stage was cleared the lights went down and STEEL PANTHER exploded onto the stage like they were at Madison Square Gardens. The Key Club holds 1200 people and is set up like HQ (Adelaide) or the Metro (Melb) on three levels, but the way they set the stage up gives the band maximum 'poncing around' space. They certainly looked the part. The singer Michael Starr looks like Vince Neil from Motley, before the plastic surgery and too many pies. He is short and bleach blonde and is wearing a cut off denim jacket and spandex tights. The drummer has the best name in rock, Stix Zidinnia (say it out loud a few times) is a powerhouse on the kit. The bass player is called Lexxie Foxxx and is constantly preening his ludicrously long blonde hair, often stopping mid song to pick up a mirror and re-apply his lip gloss and at one point doing a 'hair solo', facilitated by two of the others holding hairdryer at hip height to blow his locks about. The line-up is completed by Satchel on guitar. Good looking chisel jawed, and a shredding guitar player. The first thing that hits you is 'damn these guys can really play'. They are a really tight band, and they pull off all the Metal nuances with both precision and humour. The interaction between the band when they are playing is hilarious and often really subtle. we saw them just before their own album Feel The Steel was released, so there were some of their originals sprinkled through the set, which was like a Metal's greatest hits. Motley, Ratt, Poison, Jovi all covered with pin point precision. Their own songs had all the hallmarks of classic hair 80's tunes.

In between songs the banter was more...let's say contentious. Jordan was disgusted. She liked when they were playing, for they are extremely good. But she HATED every second of them talking between songs. They have decided to resurrect all the un-PC, sexist, racist, offensive attitude that existed in hair metal in the 80's as well as the music. Every shred of my right thinking brain knows that even as a joke all of that stuff is appalling, offensive and wrong. They said things I would never have stood for at another gig, but as it's clearly meant to be comic, or ironic. Probably. The problem is to make an 'ironic' 'fag' joke you are still doing that material, whether you mean it or not. I liken it to the Suicide Girls phenomenon. Tattooed, pierced alternative girls being alternative and being empowered and so on, but at the end of the day it's still girls taking their clothes off. It is wrong like Lonely Island is wrong yet still funny, but more Panther is way more offensive. But I thought it was funny as fuck! Hilarious (if obviously scripted), jibes at people's sexuality and ethnicity, which everybody was lapping up. I wonder what bit of my brain gave this material a 'hall pass' because it is in the context of a 'funny hair metal thing'. Is it the same as watching a Victorian play and going 'well you wouldn't treat the help like that these days, but back then for purposes tonight of entertainment...'. I guess I'd say it's about 'Context'.

When they got John Corabi (ex: Motley Crue, Brides of Destruction/Union member) up they basically paid him out and said 'Nah we're not doing any of your songs, let's do Halen', he was very clearly in on the gag.

Since we saw them last April they have appeared in Europe and the UK, becoming the most talked about act at the Download festival and selling out their own shows to rabid crowds. The skydived into a US Festival in June. In full Lycra gear. They have released their debut album full of hilariously offensive songs. Check below for the video for Death To All But Metal' and there dozens of clips and live footage of them playing live, including guest spots by Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Paul Stanley, Justin from the Darkness, and many others. be warned some of the clips are VERY un-office friendly, be warned (especially their power ballad Community Property uncut version), but if you enjoy 80's hair metal and are offended by say the video of Warrants Cherry Pie, you'll probably dig Steel Panther.

Death To all but Metal
http://video.universalrepublic.com/?plid=1481452858&v=18409155001&aid=0

*Sarah Silverman bit at the end gets funnier every time i see it. Which has been a lot.

JANUARY 7TH 2010 - Marine Boy Vs Astro Boy

I have long been of the opinion that Astro Boy is over-rated. the twee Anime do-gooder with the rocket up his pants, was always a poor second to the fantastic Marine Boy in my opinion.

Marine Boy was one of the first Japanese cartoons to be dubbed into English and syndicated in the USA back in the late 1960's. It was shown endless on Aussie TV during the 1970s (and is apparently now showing on Saturday mornings on one of the free to air digital channels). So he was totally a pioneer. He was a bit more of a teenager than the pesky Astro, and he wasn't a robot. He was a regular 'could-be-you-or-me' kid who could do remarkable things. He was a kid, but he was a Marine for Ocean Patrol. He could breathe under the water with the help of 'Oxy-Gum', he had a white dolphin and his girlfriend was a topless Mermaid called Neptina, who's nudity was always hidden by an arm or her flowing hair. there were a couple of other older men in his crew, called Bolton and Piper. And his dad (Dr Mariner - hilarious) and the clumsy scientist (Dr Fumble - double hilarious). Originally called Under Water Boy Marine in Japan, they changed it for the Western audiences to the snappier Marine Boy.

Every week marine Boy would face off against pirates and devious types, but mostly it was giant radio active crabs and maniac giant squids and so forth. It was great. MUCH better than Astro Boy. He would totally kick Astro boy sorry robot arse in a fight.

So why isn't there Marine Boy t-shirts, lunch boxes, figurines and bubble gum cards then?

I don't know. But I am not happy about it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HqSkY4vtVY

JANUARY 6TH 2010

I am currently playing Baby Bingo with many other friends of Beth and Jono, who are expecting the arrival of little Lemon any tick of the clock. The official due date is January 10th but I am betting on January the 8th. Why? It's Elvis Presley's birthday. Good enough reason and plus it gives Beth a strong message that I am hoping for an earlier rather than later arrival. Some people are saying Jan 28, which is just cruel!

I met Beth when I was running BANG! the first time. She was very shy, but one week she brought in heart shaped lollipops and was handing them out to people. The following week she approached the DJ box with lollipops in her hand and I started screaming

LOLLIPOP!
LOLLIPOP!
LOLLIPOP!
LOLLIPOP!

at the top of my lungs and pretty much scared the crap out of her (sorry Miss Beth). We have been firm friends ever since. She met Jono at my club and here they are a few years later, married and having babies.

It's a wonderful world.

Anyway welcome Lemon Elvis Adey (JAN 8, JAN 8, JAN 8, JAN 8) and much much love to Beth & Jono!