UNITY FEST: The Mufflers, Graveyard Rumble, The Fleabitten Tramps @ Misfit Theatre, Auckland

I rocked up before the bands started playing, I think, unless some played before I arrived. Anyway, I went inside and grabbed all the free 'zines that I could, and then cruised round the back to the courtyard where the bands were playing.

Sammy Vulture and Lenny Sparkles from the Fleabitten Tramps were very happy to see me, and very disappointed that Adam from If I Had a Gun wanted to charge me the $4 to get in. Not as disappointed as me, seeing as it was all the money I had to my name. Miguel Sanchez, Lenny's fabulous chihuahua, was the most happy to see me of all, but then it started to rain and he had to get put away in a car.

The first band started playing in the rain, as the event organisers hastily found stuff to cover the amps and mics. I'm not sure which band it was, but they were good,,, Luckily the rain soon cleared up, and the sun came out and it got kinda hot.

Lenny blagged some money and we headed down to the supermarket to buy her some more beer. As we counted out $7 in silver coins, the check-out lady said "Why don't you go to a bank?" -- suggesting that we should have gone to a bank during the week and changed our coins into "real" money. What a bitch. Lenny's a busker, it's all she has.

When we came back the other band was playing. They sounded kinda the same, only with female vocals. Good still; rockin'.

Finally came the main event, the Fleabitten Tramps, headlining, in what was only their third or fourth gig. First the drawing of the raffle, to see who won a six-pack of beer and getting their name written across Lenny's chest in masking tape. Bob, star of Bozzee 'zine # 2 won, and Sammy taped Lenny up.

Then everyone assumed their positions: organ, drums, vocals, guitar, violin and banjo. I pressed record on the video camera and the gig was underway. I knew all the songs from endless hours of listening to Lenny practise banjo, but now they were a lot more groovey. It was hillbilly-riffic, if you know what I mean. People left though, guess it wasn't Punk Rock enough for them.

After they'd finished playing a little boy named Jack showed Lenny and Sammy his penis, and I guess you couldn't really get a better compliment.

WHACK & BITE: Deadman, Anti-Kati, Audioslut, Marq Bizarre, Males Kort @ Paradise Bar, Auckland; 6 december

Well, the lovely Zip was in town for a week, because he had to leave Australia and re-enter for his visa requirements. So k5k decided to organise a gig. The organising went really well: as far as this gig went it was the best promoted and most talked about gig yet,,,, and yet, it seems everyone must have gone to see Robbie Williams instead. The crowd was small, and town seemed to be very dead, even though the weather was very nice.

Anyways, Paradise Bar is a lovely venue, and had a decent sound system, so I was looking forward to playing. k5k bought me a couple of beers and I was in a party mood. I opted to go first, I was so excited 'cos I hadn't DJ'd in months. I musta started around 22:00, and was only playing to the handful of people who'd showed up. But damn, I didn't care. I fucked shit up, played all the great new stuff that's been released on my label since I last played,,, the recording of it still fucked out though, so I still have nothing to show for all the times I've played. Afterwards Zip said that it was crazy, that it fucked with his head, and that was the best compliment I could have hoped for.

Marq followed straight after me, and I took this time to talk to some people, both in the bar and across the road at the K'Road Ballroom where Johnny Christ were playing. I was hoping some of them would come over, but it looked like the Punk-Rock was gonna go pretty late too.

I came back, k5k told me that Hakaider wasn't gonna be playing 'cos he'd just spent all afternoon getting tattooed, that kinda explained why he spent the whole time standing outside leaning on the balcony. That ruled out Bloodbox playing too, anyway Splash said he was too busy. DJ Drugpusher never showed up either; we'd never met him, but it's perhaps unlikely he'll get on an A-Klass party bill again soon.

k5k played next, a live Anti-Kati set,,, I got bored,,, maybe I was just getting sober ,,, I went to the back room and tried to have a nap, but as you can imagine it was kinda impossible. I started dancing instead, and the exercise woke me up,,, I knew the songs, so it was fun,,,,

Audioslut turned up just in time, k5k was just finishing,,,, he played a short but brutal set,,, I guess that was about the time I really started to wish I'd remembered my earplugs. A whole lotta really strange-looking people turned up,,, kinda looking like those nu-indie types, so probably students or something. They went into closed back room,,, it wasn't until one of them opened the door and drunken Bon Jovi blared out that I realised they were all doing kareoke,,,, it was funny watching the looks on their faces every time they ventured out to the bar or the toilets, especially when the next act took his place in the DJ booth.

Zip was playing a live Deadman set, off his laptop. And it was loud, brutal, pounding Hardcore violence, which I guess Core-tex Labs are famed for. He's played to 10,000 people before, but tonight it was just about seven. But I danced up a storm, and so did Koil, and even some random person off the street, who looked really drunk. It was fantastic. It was at about this point that a familiar situation occurred, with the bar staff telling k5k that the bar had to close at 02:00 [i.e. the music was too loud and nasty and there weren't enough customers]. k5k of course told Zip to just keep playing, but eventually we wound it up, packed it up and went home. It was worth it, it was fantastic.

VERSION 1'03: Mental Illness, Marzuk.improv.nz, Matt B vs k5k @ Odeon Lounge, Auckland; 26 November

I almost wasn't gonna go to this, but in the end I cruised round to k5k's, went and got some beers and then sculled a couple before heading up. It was closing night of the inaugural Version festival, and k5k had managed to score the closing slot. We seemed to arrive around the time of the Mental Illness set, just a DJ set of music released by k5k's arch-rivals data:bass.

It was background though, as I was suddenly confronted with a certain goth rapist bastard who I'd heard of but never met before. I was kinda drunk, and had to fight the urge to bottle him. He even came and sat at our table, and prattled on for hours. He's really the most pretentious wanker I've ever met,,, well, he didn't meet me, but I know what he looks like now,,,, k5k got me more beer, hoping it would calm me down.

Mental Illness ended, and then it seemed we were waiting for the drummer of the next act to show up. This went on for over an hour, while someone called DJ Cyg seemed to be playing tunes,,,, shocking organisation,, but k5k's father turned up and bought us more beer, so it was all good.

I think that act got scrapped eventually, and then it was Marzuk.improv.nz,,, which seemed to involve a bass player, a drummer and two guitarists, and Matt B controlling a computer programme on the big screen that showed them what style to play in, how fast, what time signature, and who should play,,,, it was,,, predictable really, as you saw what was going to happen before the musicians did,,,, the bass player was pretty good though.

Anyway, it was around midnight by the time it came for the main event, and the café was still pretty full. I took up position in front of the stage with my video camera, propping myself up on a table, and hit record. What followed was Matt B with a headset mike and a bunch of effects pedals triggering all sorts of machines as k5k twiddled knobs and stuff. It didn't sound too harsh compared to other noise sets that I've seen, but I did have my earplugs in, and maybe it was just a quieter sound system. Whatever, people actually stayed until the end [about half an hour later] and even clapped when it was finished. Considering how the shows k5k organises usually go, that's a big success,,,

THE HERBALISER DJs: Ollie Teeba and Jason Wherry; + Manual Bundy, Stinky Jim @ Galatos, Auckland, NZ; Saturday 13 September

I had to get the last bus into town, which left at like 22:30 or something, so I got into town about 23:00, which is stupidly early when you're going to see some international act that won't play till well after midnight,,, but what are you gonna do? As I stepped off the bus onto a moist K'Rd, I decided I needed to piss, and luckily found some toilets in Beresford Square. The floor was strewn with broken lightbulb, a straw, the cardboard box the lightbulb came in: a regular P-den.

I then strolled down to Galatos. The door staff wouldn't let me, or anyone, keep their tickets, because "they needed to count them at the end of the night",,, I thought that was why they had rip-off tabs on them,, so no souvenir, and no directions, which I sorely needed, having never been to the main part of Galatos before. I took the stairs up, found myself in a small bar, very tasteful, with maybe 50 people in it, and a DJ in the corner who was playing some groovy music. I managed to find a perch underneath a speaker, and sat for maybe ten minutes, saying to myself "this really doesn't look like the right place, there must be something else going on here," before I went downstairs, and went through the big doors into the main room [I know it must seem like I'm kinda stupid, but it really wasn't that obvious to me, especially considering how small the building looks from outside]. The main room is huge, and rather well-decorated, with a large stage at one end, and there were a couple of hundred people in it already.

I believe it was Stinky Jim that was playing,,, whatever, I decided to go and have a smoke, and so I walked around Galatos Street for a while looking for a little alcove or something that would make it all possible, but there were really none, and there were heaps of people sitting in cars and stuff,,, so I decided to head back to the toilets at Beresford Square. I was attempting to smoke and piss at the same time when I noticed that the door had decided to unlock itself, and I quickly pressed the button to relock it, while I cursed Auckland City Council's genius idea of having automatic toilets with an unannounced time-limit.

When I got back to Galatos, Manual Bundy seemed to be DJing [I coulda got him and Stinky Jim mixed up though]. More and more people were flowing in, and there was nothing I could do but dance. I was soon reminded of something a mate of mine said: that everyone at certain gigs these days seems to be like 18 years old or something, a fresh new uni student who's only there cos it was advertised on campus, and I couldn't help but think he might be right as a whole bunch of young looking hooligans spilt their beers on me, came and stood directly in front of me and then didn't dance, taking up all the space I was using to dance, and just generally acted inconsiderate,,,

Anyway, the DJ was playing all sorts of stuff, and I kept dancing, and the VJs were trying to calibrate all their many screens in preparation for the main event, and then the DJ dropped Snoop Dogg's «Beautiful» onto the turntable, and I went "Hang on a minute mate, you're playing pop music, what are you thinking?!",,, and he followed it up with stuff like Blu Cantrall & Sean Paul,,, and I started thinking, "Fuck, what's up with Hip-Hop DJs these days, always playing major label pop music? Damn, I saw some of this shit on Top of the Pops earlier this evening",,,

The Herbaliser DJs, and the emphasis is on DJs, cos it turns out they were here to promote their Solid Steel album coming out soon, and so rather than play Herbaliser stuff, which I have to admit is far from my favourite Ninja Tune music, they just played other people's music. And as they stepped up to their four decks, and the house lights dimmed, and all the visuals kicked in, the crowd roared. God, it wasn't that exciting. The visuals were pretty good in places, kinda lame in others, but it was a pretty good setup, with about 20 TV screens all around the front and sides and back of the stage and one big screen behind the DJs.

Now, when it said they were on four decks, what that seemed to mean was that one of them would play a song and then the other one would, and occasionally the little white guy would do some really weak scratching over something the other guy was playing, and the crowd would cheer like it was cool or something. Mainly they were just standing behind their decks drinking Coke and looking "cool". He finally did some genuine beat juggling leading into, yes, the pop music of Busta Rhymes' «Ante Up», which is a pretty cool song. The audience sure thought it was, and I guess maybe that was their excuse for playing pop music [??],,, I stayed till about 02:00 but I was getting tired of dancing, and the bogus crowd, and they played Sean Paul and then Beyonce's «Crazy in Love» in rapid succession, and I was thinking it was really whack of two international DJs from a supposedly independant label to come all the way to NZ just to play some major label pop music [I mean fuck, did they buy it or did they get given it by the major label PR guys, cos either way is lame]. And so when Justin fucking Timberlake came on, I got the fuck out of there.

Don't get me wrong, I love pop music, but there's a time and a place. When I come home from international DJs and all that's in my head is pop music, that's just wrong.

AK Step '03: Bloodbox, Shadow of a Twisted Hand, Sin, Anti-Kati, DForm, Audioslut, males kort, Marq Bizarre, DJ Suicide @ Galatos, Auckland; 20 June

Another event promoted by a-klass rekidz, and I've got that cynicism before I even get to the venue - what's going to go wrong this time?

I get off the bus on K'Road, and there's a bar offering that you can have a scorpion in a shot of vodka, which boggles my mind. The bouncers however inform me that it's gonna be a $10 cover charge, and then an additional $6 for the drink. That and the fact you appearantly might need to rush to hospital afterwards really disuades me from having a Fear Factor moment.

Anyway, I find my way to Galatos, and head down to the basement, and am met at the door by MC Slypussy and his girlfriend Lina, who are here from Australia. I go and stash my gear and then walk around for a minute to get a feel for the venue. It's giving me a really bad buzz, especially because the house lights are turned up so far that you can easily see from one end of the venue to the other.

Anyways, DJ Suicide is on his decks, playing exactly what you'd usually expect from him, and people trickle in the door, but they're almost all people who are playing tonight. I sit in a corner with Edward Denton, who's kindly bought me a drink, and tell him how I'm getting paranoid things aren't gonna run on time, and that my hair looks stupid, and that no one will show.

I talk to k5k about getting DJ Suicide off the decks and getting on with the evening, and then go and sit at the door with Lina, and we spend ages gossiping about all sorts of stuff, and then finally the music changes to Marq Bizarre, who plays kinda dark ambient industrial stuff, for at least an hour. More people are showing up, and I get given drinks by first Dizrythmia and then MC slypussy,,, I haven't touched alcohol in months, and I'm starting to feel it, and I could, or should be up next on the equipment.

k5k comes and informs me that now DJ DForm is gonna be playing before me, and that I'll probably be in between live acts, which suits me just fine. So when the music finally changes to hip-hop, I get up and dance with MC slypussy and his brother Leroy, and DForm plays a lot of real pop stuff like Missy Elliot and more than one song by Xzibit. He also plays for at least an hour, but although I know things are starting to get tense for time, it was always expected he'd get a long set because he's the most well-known DJ there.

Finally we were into the live acts, and k5k tells me that now I'll be playing between two Anti-Kati sets, and I can see that that's gonna be pretty much at the end of the night. So, out to the front come Splash and Hakaider, together being the vocalists of Bloodbox, and I suddenly realise that Splash always plays barefoot.

Just like the last time I saw them, there's foot stomping and jumping around, and of course lots of screaming, over their backing tracks. Splash has a bit of paper in his hand, and I get the impression he's reading the lyrics off it. They do an encore of «S U 10 says» with one of their friends on vocals, because it's his birthday.

And then it's Shadow of a Twisted Hand, who I recognise as Koil and Trevor, who were playing under the name Gho:la a few weeks ago. This time they have different equipment. Koil has a box covered in knobs, and since I'd just found out he's been in Japan for the last ages, I realise that it's a home-made noise-maker. The noise is fantastic, absolutely shredding, and I'm really glad I'm wearing ear-plugs, as I see the bar staff with their fingers in their ears.

Koil is really going for it, jumping around more than Bloodbox, and I jump around a bit too. And suddenly one of the bar staff comes out and turns the master volume down, and Koil looks quite pissed and they stop playing. But everyone begs them to continue. Afterwards Koil is talking into the camera of his friend who was filming it, saying how fucked off he is that the bar staff turned him down when he only had five minutes more to play.

After that the sound stays down, and Sin is on. Sin is Rigel Walshe who also plays in Black Metal band Dawn of Azazel, and tonight he's playing hardbreaks off his laptop, and he's bought his own video along to go in the projector, which for lack of a screen has spent the whole night skewed across the brown wall behind the DJs. But it's immediately obvious that his video is porn. And since I know what his day-job is, I think "fucking typical",,,, yeah, that's right, he's a cop.

I head out of the venue, and go buy myself an energy drink and a cookie, and when I come back it's finally time for some Anti-Kati, and they're playing a really great cut-up set, because they've finally got some bitching hardware. They only play for about 15 minutes before k5k lets Audioslut on the decks.

Audioslut had been itching to play all night, I could see it in his body language. He played for maybe half an hour, his typical breakcore style this time including lots of dub reggae type samples, which was really cool. The bar staff have closed the bar, and now they turn up the house lights too. I can't fucking believe it, because it's not even four yet.

But this is my opportunity to jump on the cd-mixer, and I blast out the «macarena» as this large dude who seems to be the boss tells me that I've got ten minutes to pack up and get out. I tell him to go tell someone who cares, because I'm just the DJ, not the promoter. But that's about the end of that.

Stuff gets packed up and loaded into a car, and everyone bitches at the unprofessional attitude of the bar staff. Out on the street we bump into Koil, who is so pissed off he's going to a bar up on K'Rd to drink,, but first he tells us lots of stories about Japan, where he claims he was good friends with one of the Boredoms, which impresses k5k and MC slypussy.

I walk with those two back to k5k's apartment, and Herr Denton, Lina and DJ Suicide are in the car, and we end up sitting in k5k's studio smoking and drinking duty-free Kahlua and Smirnoff, and it's getting late and boring, so Herr Denton drops me home.

It was once again disasterous, so it ended up being kinda funny.

kid 606, phelps and munro, parallel universe DJs, raw fx @ FU, Auckland; Sunday 8 June

This gig was like Cobra Killer a year or two back: some random promoter no one's ever heard of puts on a gig at FU with some support acts that no one's ever heard of. k5k spends the weeks leading up to said gig trying to get himself on the bill, and eventually it just comes down to him, Herr Denton and myself going to the gig and bitching.

I managed to arrive quite late, and am assured that I haven't missed anything. Someone, I assume a parallel universe DJ, is playing IDM off a CD-mixer.

Then some guy gets up, and I assume it's raw fx, and he does this beat-box routine. The crowd goes wild, but others such as myself assume that electronic trickery is involved, and k5k tells me that the whole routine is stolen and he's heard it done better.

It's over in about five minutes, and then just like that kid 606 is on, and everyone moves towards the DJ box, craning around the stupid pillars that hold up the roof to get a better view.

I watch for about five minutes, and no one seems to be dancing, and I think "that's fucking typical" and find a gap and I'm down the front and up for it. And then these really young looking, really drunk looking guys come up the front, and do some munter dancing, and keep waving their cigerettes around and hitting each other with them, and I shrink away and keep a wary eye out. Fuck I can't stand people like that on the dance floor.

Kid 606 keeps the action going, using two laptops and a few other little gadgets to do a little live manipulation. A rousing cover of Missy Elliot's «Get Your Freq On» was a good touch, the ambient track that seemed to go on forever wasn't, especially because I was the only one dancing to it, and had to keep on moving so as to look suitably freaked out on acid (I wasn't).

After about an hour, certainly no more than 90 minutes, I needed a break and went outside to buy a drink. I came back five minutes later to find that that was it. His set was over and he was packing up. I was more than a little disappointed. I was only just getting started, and here was the international DJ done for the night.

Phelps and Munro were playing though, and the dancefloor had cleared out, so everyone who was up for it was going nuts. They were using CD-mixer, a laptop, and some other equipement, playing some drum'n'bass and a cool Kylie remix, where I assume they were just using the sample function on their CD-mixer to make parts of it all skippy and broken.

k5k handed out flyers to people, and then we left, and I for one was rather disappointed. k5k somehow had the inside information: that he'd only arrived at about 16:30 and was leaving again that night after the gig (he stopped playing at about 00:15). And that he usually charged US$1500 for a gig, so he must have cut his rates ridiculously to come here. 100 tickets at NZ$20 each would hardly cover air fares, promotion and venue hire, let alone his fucking profit.

I dunno about some of those punters, but the lasting impression I got was that kid 606 is lame.

battery: Bloodbox, Gho:la, k5k, DJ Suicide @ Necropolis, Auckland; Satuday 7 June

This is the second installment of battery, and as I'd missed the first, I wasn't about to miss out again. Besides, I was really curious to see electronic music at Necropolis, Auckland's legendary underground punk rock dive venue.

Things took ages to get started, with DJ Suicide playing his industrial records for ages. He's getting better at mixing; he'll go far, especially now he's picked a name for himself.

Finally Gho:la set up. They had a laptop and a synth, and some other cool devices, and continued the industrial theme. They were very good, but I was starting to get bored of all the music being in time.

So, I was happy to see k5k was DJing next. I was hoping for an all out assault of breakcore and stuff, but no. It seems like every time I see this guy DJ it's more disappointing than the last time, although I'll give him a break this time because he was only using vinyl, and I'm sure most of his good tunes must be on CDR. Eventually he played a couple of songs decent enough to dance to, but I got so bored I went outside and down the road to buy a drink.

Bloodbox eventually got their shit together, and played for all of about 10 minutes. Since they were just screaming along to their backing tape, it sounded quite like their album «structure against self», only with the vocals lower in the mix, which I thought was an improvement.

Things really wound down after that, especially when someone came up the stairs yelling paranoid stuff about the police being outside, just like every other gig I've been to here. Appearantly if I'd stayed past 01:30 I would have witnessed k5k in a DJ-battle with Suicide; instead I was home making sushi. I win the battle!

PASIFIKA FESTIVAL 2003 @ Western Springs, Auckland

I cruised down around about 12:35, with a plan to catch Nesian Mystik at 12:55. Damn, I've been in Auckland for a few years now, and I still haven't been to one of these even though I live right around the corner from Western Springs.

Actually, it was much as I expected. Crowds of people. Crowds. A whole great mixture of people. I struggle through; there's endless streams of familys, all walking far too slow for my liking, not keeping left like all the signs suggest,,,, [I'm not really into rules, but stuff like that is kinda common-sense]

So I wind up at the marquee where Nesian Mystik are gonna be playing, and I'm early, and the tent is overflowing anyway, and I catch the end of a set that I'm pretty sure was Verse II,,,, who knows,,, so I decided to continue on around the lake and see what was going down.

I was scoping everything and everyone, and I realised that all the stalls are selling these T-shirts with stuff like "Freshy" [instead of "Fresh Up" juice] on them; that's what all the young people are wearing, and I start to think that it seems that they've been sold all these racist slogans back in the form of these "culture-jamming" T-shirts, and I wonder if that's empowering, or just fucking sick,,,

I start getting really buzzed out that this whole thing is a ghoulish circus, a once-a-year event to make Pacific Islanders feel like they belong, which mainly serves instead to make them a commodity. I keep my head down and keep walking. I end up at the Contemporary Stage, and take a seat, and it seems that this is FUSA, from Christchurch.

Live bass, drums, keys and acoustic guitar, with three male MCs and a female as well. They had a very contemporary sound, a mix of hip-hop, reggae, funk and urban, lots of urban. So maybe they'll even go places. They had a great bass sound and groove going on in one of the songs, and an MC that sounded a bit like Eminem, so that it sounded very like one of his songs; I think that might mean they've got some skills.

As they got to the end of their set I cruised off, and this whole thing was starting to wear me out, but I was gonna hang around until 13:35 when the programme I had said I was gonna be seeing some jazz fusion. So I rolled over to the Arts Stage, a little place hidden out of the way,,,, I bought a drink of this interesting Tongan beverage which seemed to mainly be made of watermelon and stuff, and sat down on the grass.

It seems that I was witnessing Many Hands, described in the programme as world music. They had Pacific drums, Asian drums, Indian drums, and a female Chinese vocalist, along with this cool Chinese guy I'd seen at the Lantern Festival a little while ago, who sang and played this cool Chinese string instrument. These were all coupled with some white males, playing guitar, bass, drums and keys, in a kinda jazzy fashion. This really let the whole thing down, as it ended up sounding like white rock music rather than something cool and experimental. The mix was really shitty, the nice female vocals and a whole lot more drowned out by electric guitar. At the end of their set they exhorted everyone to buy their CD off them,,, but I wouldn't bother,,,,

Then it was sitting around as they dismantled their gear, and the next people set up their gear, and in that break we were lucky enough to get a performance by two young women who called themselves Sisters That Creep, a delightful urban piece that had them singing/rapping about how they got game over a backing tape. Great way to promote yourselves, but you perhaps picked the wrong stage.

And then the "jazz fusion" that I'd been waiting for, from a group called Soul Artistry, and I'd been seriously misled, as they launched into a version of Che Fu's «Misty Frequencies» [yawn] that they'd appearantly been lucky enough to be invited to perform at an awards event or something.

At which stage I decided that I couldn't be bothered any more, bought Rorn the chop suey she wanted and walked it back home to her.