» event reviews

[EVENT REVIEW] Devin Townsend @ Fowler’s Live (Adelaide), 16 Mar 2010

biodagar — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:29:22 +0000

The Devy tour was highly anticipated – and was, in fact, a sell-out, which is rare enough for this town. Happily, despite everybody’s high expectations, nobody was disappointed.

Well, not disappointed in the headlining act, anyway – but I’ll get to that.

I rocked up at Fowler’s fearing that I’d done my usual intend-to-get-there-on-time-and-fail trick, and that perhaps I would miss the support act, Contrive. Not that I particularly wanted to catch Contrive.

It was an interesting dilemma: having heard (negatively) about Contrive from tens of people, I didn’t particularly want to see them, and yet I didn’t want to be late. In the end, I got to the show with enough time to spare to get inside (yes, there was a line), have a yarn with Avalon at the door, catch up with two or three friends, and score beers, before Contrive hit the stage.

And, well, what can I say about these guys? Not anything good, that’s for sure. I had heard bad things about Contrive from every single person who has ever seen them and had cause to talk about them. When it’s one person, you go “well, grain of salt”. When it’s ten or more, you go “wow, there is something about this band that everybody hates”.

And I can tell you what it is. It is actually a combination of bad songwriting; a lack of originality; a sound that is very much of a high school band in a battle of the bands, in a venue where the sound desk is manned by the geriatric guy who does the lights and cleans the toilets; and capped off by performance values that are sub-standard.

Plus a set that went for half an hour longer than it should have.

Quite honestly… READ MORE >>

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EVENT REVIEW: Edguy, Cynic, Black Majesty @ Fowler’s Live (Adelaide), 5 Jan 2010

biodagar — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:38:07 +0000

Cynic were peaceful; Edguy was enormous amounts of fun. It was a weird-as-hell lineup, but a great show nonetheless, and a fucking brilliant start to the metal year.

Hot weather always makes me late for gigs. Don’t ask me why; maybe it’s because I keep waiting for that never-to-arrive time when suddenly the heat of the day states to wane. Or maybe it makes me sluggish. Whatever it is, the summer lethargy hit me this night, which meant that we rocked up to Fowler’s Live at the point where openers Black Majesty were already four songs into their set.

Not expecting many people to rock up – like, honestly, how many people are seriously into power metal in Adelaide? Not many! – I wasn’t surprised to see only a few people outside having a yarn. What I was surprised to see was a rather decent number of people inside the venue, and, more to the point, enjoying Black Majesty’s set.

Of course, if you talked to most people, they had all turned out to see Cynic. Not half as many were keen on Edguy; but the fact that they were enjoying Black Majesty was a good sign.

Black Majesty are a tight little outfit. I only caught, like, two or maybe three songs of their set, but they did a reasonable job. They have a half-decent stage presence, their music is well performed, and, although it’s not striking or really even that original-sounding, they were a decent opener.

Except. (There’s always one, isn’t there?) I am sorry to rain on everybody’s parade, but …. READ MORE –>

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EVENT REVIEW: Obituary @ The Gov (Adelaide), 21 Nov 2009

biodagar — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:35:48 +0000

Some would say that this show kicks the shit out of all the previous shows this year; but I’m not going to go there any more or make comparisons because it’s too hard after the year of awesome tours we’ve had. Suffice it to say that it was killer.

One thing about going to shows in late spring, on a Saturday, is that, if you are hanging out at a mate’s place before the show, time tends to disappear as you relax and get into beer and conversation. As we did on Saturday prior to Obituary; meaning it was a bit of a scramble to get our shit together and head out to the Gov on Port Road on time. It turned out that we only missed the very beginning of Mammoth‘s set; something that I was pleased about because I finally got to see these guys play. I’m probably the only one on the scene here who has for some reason missed them every single time.

I’d been looking forward to the Obituary gig, not just because I love death metal shows and anticipation was high, but because it was at the Governor Hindmarsh: a venue that I consider one of the best in Adelaide for live shows. Why? It’s big, it’s comfortable, the sound is absolutely killer and can handle even the heaviest shows with ease. And, of course, you can stand out in the beer garden having a smoke in full view of the band and still enjoy the set. Everything you need for a great night, the Gov has, and metal shows there are (unfortunately) fairly rare.

Getting to the Gov was a bit of a bitch, given the roadworks, and the subsequent removal of a lot of the parking immediately around the Governor Hindmarsh in order to cope with it. This may have been one of the reasons why there weren’t many punters present for the support acts. Those who were there were enthusiastic as hell, for the most part, and the general vibe was one of rising…. READ MORE–>

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EVENT REVIEW: Arch Enemy & Suffocation @ Fowler’s Live (Adelaide), 3 Nov 09

biodagar — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:37:24 +0000

Our contributor in Perth, Goatlady, exclaimed, ‘we’re not worthy’ in regards to this much great metal in one show. Fuck, how right she was. Where do I begin?

Adelaide is notorious for scoring major shows during the week, and the Suffocation/Arch Enemy show was no exception. Unlike many shows, however, I rocked up early to find a line stretching from the door of Fowler’s, down the stairs, up the lane, and nearly right back to the back of the Dark Horsey Bookshop.

The buzz of excitement was palpable in the line. Punters were discussing the bands, the potential setlists of each headlining act, and their previous experiences of either Suffocation or Arch Enemy – sometimes both.

The line didn’t actually take forever to go through, which was something I’d feared might happen. It turned out that the security at Fowler’s was on its toes enough to have one dude walking the line, checking IDs and issuing 18+ wristbands, which meant that we were lined up for ten minutes instead of half an hour. But, also surprisingly… READ MORE–>

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EVENT REVIEW: Kreator @ HQ (Adelaide), 27 Sept 09

biodagar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:52:07 +0000

Kreator's Mille Petrozza. Photo (c) Foss 2009

From start to finish, this show was absolute gold. Aussie thrashers Mortal Sin put on a killer set and did their best to warm up the crowd for Kreator; but when Kreator hit the stage they weren’t so much upstaged as seen to be in a completely different class. The German thrash gods played thrash the way it’s meant to be: fast, intense, and without compromise.

Sunday night shows are always a bit hit-and-miss in Adelaide, regardless of whether they’re all ages or 18+ shows. Being a fucking cold and wet night, with the Kreator gig just one of a huge amount of… READ MORE –>

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Choose Mics @ Live on Light Square (Adelaide), 25 July 2009

Leticia — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:30:04 +0000

Ok, so writing reviews of genres that I don’t hit very often is a bodgy proposition. But I love to do it, so bear with me.

On Saturday 25 July 2009, Foss and I headed down to Live on Light for the Hip Hop Live show run by Alcatrax. Foss had been asked by Hektic to shoot the show, and while I technically didn’t have to work, and while I really enjoyed the show, I couldn’t help but analyse parts of the performances. Call it years of doing this for every live show I ever go to, or call it obsession, or whatever you like – but I figured I may as well write the review and be bloody well done with it.

While there was a bit of a stuff-up with the starting times (the flyers said 8 pm, we were told 9 pm and the show actually started at 9.30 pm), it’s not like it was a drama. In fact, starting later was probably a good thing: there was hardly anybody on deck when we rocked up at 9 pm, but by 9.30 a few more had shown up.

First on stage was Nikolai, a self-confessed sci-fi geek: a dude who looks big on stage because he’s quite tall, but he also commands quite a lot of attention when he’s up doing his thing. Nikolai’s performance was good, though self-conscious. I think perhaps performing to one big empty room wouldn’t have helped at all, and I also think that this dude needs to leave his glasses on while he’s on stage. I think they suit his image as a sci-fi geek – they suit him, aesthetically, as well too – and it would enable him to interact more confidently with any of the punters in the venue. Being unable to see properly wouldn’t at all help his ability to move around the stage either – something which is inherent in a hip hop show: an energetic and into it emcee is far more likely to get a simliar response from the crowd. Self-consciousness tends to create unease in an audience.

Nikolai’s rhymes were good too. It was a really enjoyable set, actually – just the right length, some good beats, and Nikolai, when he loses his self-consciousness, finds his feet and spits far more smoothly than when he starts to think about where he is and what he’s doing. Of course, that last comment is assumption on my behalf, but it is exactly what it sounded like. Unfortunately for Nikolai’s set, the sound wasn’t ideal – I experienced a whole shitload of high-end irritation from where I was standing in the middle of the venue (which, let’s be honest, at Live on Light is the best place to stand for good sound). The other thing was that Nikolai’s voice needs to be brought out a lot more, with its bass tones emphasised, for it to really gel with his beats and to ‘become one’ with the music. At the show, his vocals seemed to ride atop the mix instead of being integral to it.

Second up was Mase & Mattic – a great duo, who really work off each other’s energies really well. The interaction these guys have on stage, and their energy, transforms to the crowd – which had actually swelled quite a bit since the beginning of the show – and creates a much more communal vibe. These guys also had a crew of their mates who rocked up just in time to watch them perform. While this sort of thing always strikes me as being a bit rent-a-crowd in appearance, it was good to see the interaction between the audience and the duo on stage. That interaction bounced, and it lifted the vibe considerably.

Unfortunately for this show the ‘crowd’ was one of those rock-up-to-see-one-act-and-go type crowds, so after Mase & Mattic had performed, a whole lot of people left the venue. After that a whole lot of new people didn’t exactly show up. It was pretty quiet in town, and it wasn’t warm, and the show had been shifted by the venue because of a screw-up, so there were a lot of factors against it. Still, it sucked that it happened given that the show was shaping up to be a good one.

Hektic himself was up next. This dude is a more natural performer – possibly because he does his thing a lot, or maybe because being on stage just isn’t a big deal to him. For whatever reason, up to this point in the show, Hektic was the most natural performer of the lot. He was also the most energetic, and worked hard to try and get some interaction, some groove, some something from the punters who were there. By the end of the set, he was getting applause and yells – no mean feat from a small, self-conscious crowd.

Second-to-last act was Social Change, followed by Dialect, with their DJ SpinDokta. What a lot of the people who witnessed this act stage didn’t see, was SpinDokta scratching metal during the soundcheck. It was far from perfect – the beats didn’t align, for example – but by hell it was good (of course, I would say that, being a metalhead!). Social Change were a whole level up from Mase & Mattic. Although M&M are good, and I’d definitely go see these guys again, there is a quality about Social Change that is hard to pin down. I suspect it comes down to professionalism. But I have to say that SpinDokta added immeasurably to the set of Social Change, as did these guys’ short burst of freestyling – a difficult thing to do, and a great thing to hear done well. The largely solo rhymes of Dialect at the end of this set were smooth, well spoken, timed well, and generally really enjoyable.

The more I write about this show, the more exhausting it sounds. To be fair, these acts all played quite literally back-to-back. Used to metal shows where you have a set, and then anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour between bands, depending on the organisation, it was really bam-bam-bam. And just that much better because of it. There was no time for anybody to get bored or wander off; and the back-to-back style of the show, combined with the running order, tended to set off each act’s peculiarities.

The final act for the night was, of course, Choose Mics. These guys came all the way from Brisbane to play to maybe ten people, but the lack of people didn’t dampen their performance. It may have dampened their enthusiasm perhaps, but not their ease of interaction with one or two overly enthusiastic punters who, by this stage of the night, had had a skinful. With a frontman hailing from Birmingham, Choose Mics have a pleasantly British sound that always sounds a notch above Aussie emcees. That’s my personal preference, so make of that what you will. Choose Mics also had an interesting take on the stylings of artists like Nas, for example, so if you blend a British end with Aussie hip hop and some of the stylings of Nas – if you can – then you’ll have a bit of an idea of what it was like. It was a great set, and I hope I get the opportunity to see these guys again sometime.

Overall, this show was a winner. Each act had their pros and cons, but overall it worked well, the show ran to time, there was no bullshit. There were hardy any people there, which was one noticeable element, but I don’t think there’s much you can do about that on a quiet night in Adelaide. My only gripe is that the front bar of Live on Light was cranking dance, which was almost totally anathema to the hip hop going on out the back. I also suggest that this could potentially have turned people off – especially given that the doors to the back room were usually closed during the sets. A face in the door – look around – a dance DJ but no hip hop – potentially the wrong venue. Easy to see how that would happen. If the show had been fed through the speakers in the front room, then quite possibly there may have been more interest from passers by.

For info about Adelaide’s Hip Hop Live shows, keep an eye on the Alcatrax MySpace.

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Music Journalism 101 – free online course*

biodagar — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:18:31 +0000

This course is being posted progressively. Check back regularly for the latest additions.

101 A. Introduction.

101 B. Ethnography.

101 C. Ethnography at Gigs.

101 D. Reviewing a Band’s Performance.

101 E. Reviewing a New Release: stage one.

101 F. Reviewing a New Release: stage two.

*** NEW 101 G. Preparing for Interviews. (9 July 2009)

*Free in the sense you can use it, but please note that Music Journalism 101 by the author of this blog, Leticia Supple, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/au/.

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