I was feeling really ill, I was nervous, I was sure there was going to be a big crowd, and I was going to have to play in front of them. When I got to the venue there were already like 20 people there, easily about four times as many as I've ever played to before.
I took the stage, and the equipment was pretty shit, only one turntable, and two discmans as the CD players, one of which had no readout whatsoever and had to be kept closed with masking-tape. And the desk they were on was completely the wrong height, so I spent the whole time stooping and kinda hurt my back. So underground and hardcore. I played for about 40 minutes, at a couple of points I looked at the crowd, and the place was full, like at least 50 people. I ended with "Macarena" which was great, I'm sure someone heckled me, and everyone was happy when I turned it off.
k5k wrangled me a free beer from the bar, and I sat at a table down the front with him and his girlfriend Honor and Squee and his sister Peta, and Flick aka Matt Brennan went onstage, for his weird beat-box and guitar metal songs, including a tribute to recently slain Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrel. People got into it, he really is a top beat-boxer, you can see why he qualified for the nationals.
Next up was Audioslut, who plays that hardcore-ragga-jungle kinda stuff, and I spent most of his set outside talking to Squee and Honor. He dropped some hip-hop at some point, which I thought was kinda different to all the other times I've heard him.
Creassault spent a long time setting up, and then played a short set of old-school industrial/electro kinda stuff, really 80s and linear, not so imaginative. But I have every respect for them, I don't know how anyone can stand to be confined to 4/4 time-signatures like that.
Finally it was time for Squee, although it was almost midnight, and there were still two more acts to follow him and the bar closed at 01:00, and I was feeling tense about what k5k was going to do, seeing as he was the promoter, and other gigs he's organised people, i.e. me, have been bumped because time ran out. That's why I always play first now. The crowd was definitely starting to thin by this point.
Squee is re-inventing himself as hardcore-abstract conscious hip-hop, with some fantastic beats and melodies composed by MC slypussy. He rapped to his backing CD, about the government and conservation and stuff, and it was well-wicked. I got it all on video too, look out for bootlegs of that to surface sometime in 2005.
k5k set up for the Anti-Kati set, and spent maybe 20 minutes making noise, quite an interesting set compared to some I've seen him do, which he finished by dropping "Jem vs the Akuban", which has great samples from the Jem tape I once lent them.
Winding things up was DJ Monkeycunt, a last-minute addition to the line-up, direct from Brisbane, Australia. He played nasty fast distorted gabba beats over a variety of 80s pop music, and danced wildly to it, and waved his fists in the air and yelled "Yeah!" I've never seen anything like it, but to tell you the truth I could count the number of Australians I have met in my life on one hand. Well, it was a great ending for those who managed to stay to the end.
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5 years ago
