gigs gigs gigs! - part 1

hey-o,

Picture this. A small room with cluster of chairs set up in a circle formation with a group of bedraggled, strung out looking folks of varying ages, sexes, nationalities, and race. At the entrance to this room is an A4 sized sheet of paper with the words "M A ANON meeting here, 7pm".

One of those people is a shaven headed, skinny, 30 year old from Melbourne, and he gets to speak...

"Hi, My name is Tony, and I'm a music addict"

Well, this scenario didn't actually happen, but it may well have, because I have seriously been investing a lot of time, energy and money in the music scene recently, probably too much, and possibly at the expense of my health (well, the health of my credit cards at least). Typical signs of an addict.

In the past two weeks, I have seen live - a seminal indie-pop Candian band in Sloan (www.sloanmusic.com), an up-and-coming and looming to be super-group huge Irish rock band, Snow Patrol (www.snowpatrol.net), an already super-group irish band, U2 (yay!), a rockabilly, country-hick outfit, The Sadies (self descirbed as "not your average surf, garage, country, rock band " - www.thesadies.net ) - (funny as hell, in a slap-yer-thigh, take-yer-partner-by-the-hand kinda way), and a bunch of local small time acts (Maplewood Lane (http://www.maplewoodlane.com), Radiogram (http://www.radiogram.org), and Joel R L Phelps (http://www.joelrlphelps.com) ) at the cool-as-feck bar The Railway Club (http://www.therailwayclub.com). On top of this, I have invested money in tickets for upcoming shows by Built To Spill (www.builttospill.com), The Waifs (www.thewaifs.com), from Perth, Oz - yay! again), and Architecture In Helsinki (www.architectureinhelsinki.com) from Melbourne, Oz). Oh, and not forgetting to mention the investment in cdee's by bands Death Cab For Cutie (www.deathcabforcutie.com), The Mountain Goats (www.themountaingoats.net), and The Eels (www.eelstheband.com) and a Barsuk records (www.barsuk.com) sampler cdee.

This obsession-addiction with bands and live music has been with me for a dozen years now, and has followed me around the globe. Not helping in any way, shape or form, is the fact that i'm am living practically in the epicentre of one of the coolest music and band producing regions on the planet, The Pacific-Northwest of North America. Also not helping is my discovery of possibly the coolest radio station on the planet, KEXP FM, from the University of Washington in Seattle. That I can listen to this via internet streaming 24 hours a day is certainly is also of no help. That this station continually churns out awesome song after awesome song, and introduces me to a new band almost every hour, and that this new band will typically be touring in town very shortly - no helping me there.

But the biggest obstacle of all, is the fact that there is no way on Gods earth do I want to give up this obsession-addiction, its waaaaaayy too much fun!

Any wonder i'm coming home early...but my thinking is that I want to maximise the fun factor while i'm here in the limited time I have left.

Another common occurrence in my life recently is the 'bizarre coincedence'. The Lisa/Before Sunset was one - here is another, altho with not quite the same level of cosmic significance.

When I was at the U2 video shoot, I was seated next to a couple from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who were here for the U2 gig, but also to visit pals who were doing a gig that Saturday night. I was invited along, and as I had nothng else on that night, decided to go. It was the "Radiogram" Railway Club gig.

Anyway, one of the supports I thought sounded like the singer from The Posies. This reminded me that i have their 1996 album 'Amazing Disgrace' cdee at home in Australia, and it so happens my housemate also has it here. I hadn't thought about the band in ages - I actually thought they'd split. As far as I knew, they'd done not a whole lot in recent years.

So, when i got home I listened to the cdee, and checked out their website, which announced they'd be doing an in-studio live performance on KEXP FM on my new fave DJ, Cheryl Waters' show the following morning.
As I said, not hugely life changing, but the chain of events was kinda eery.

(in hindsight tho, I had the voice completely misplaced at the time - Joel actually sounds more like Adam Duritz from Counting Crows than The Posies fella).

more in a mo.