death of geocities

When I first got on the internet in 1998 (yeah, I know, so totally after everyone else) I made some sites on geocities. It's how I taught myself HTML. Anyway, through the years, and especially since I started the Industrial-Jazz label in 2000, it's been a pretty damn reliable free host for my website (despite all the annoying pop-up ads and shit). Of course for several years now A-Klass have been reliably hosting the Industrial-Jazz website (and all the mp3 files) but I've always had everything mirrored at geocites.

Anyway, that's out of my hands now. geocities is dead. this also means there is now no website for my audio/visual label unmerkliche Filme, my graphic design as Nilpferd... not that either of these endeavours has been particularly productive or even particularly exists outside of my head... still, it's lucky that I migrated vidu over here before that was deleted too...

Time to fix broken links...

Iron Maiden, Lauren Harris @ Mt Smart Stadium, 20 February 2009

I was nervous for days leading up to this; driving extra carefully, crossing the road extra carefully, basically trying to avoid any unfortunate injury that would prevent me from seeing Iron Maiden.

I made my way into the city to catch a free bus to the stadium. I found the correct bus stop: the small crowd of bogans in Iron Maiden shirts gave it away. I fit right in.

It had been raining all day, but had basically eased off by then, and we cruised down the motorway, and finally arrived. I'd never been to the stadium before. We threaded our way through the grounds surrounding the stadium, and people were clustered drinking their alcohol and smoking joints before they entered.

There was a large queue to enter, but also another large cluster who were just pushing into the queue at the side, so I joined them, and I was in, and the local support band Chuganaut were just finishing up their set. I wandered down onto the field, checked out the stage and the fenced off diamond-ticket area in front of it, then went back up to check out merchandise stands and beer vendors. The queues were mad long, so I flagged it all and went back down to the field and entered the diamond area.

In the time I'd been away the diamond area had filled up quite a bit more. Furthermore, it was only 19:45. Lauren Harris was scheduled to play from 19:45 to 20:30, and Iron Maiden weren't due on stage until 21:00. So, lots of standing around, but also lots of time to try to find a place closer to the stage.

The diamond entry was to the left of the stage, so that's where I started, and used my patented trick of following in the wake of some big guy who was pushing through the crowd. Unfortunately I ended up behind a thicket of people who were all at least 6-foot tall. Always the way at concerts when you're short, but I felt more sorry for the many women I'd ended up near, all of whom seemed to be more like 5-foot tall. You could see they were fretting about what sort of view they'd get.

Lauren Harris eventually got on stage about 20:00. Some people politely nodded their heads. But really, it was god-awful hard rock. The guitarist and bass player seriously looked like they could have been in an 80s hair band. People all around me were smoking joints, and there was not a lot of movement in the crowd to get me a better view of the stage, and it had started raining, and Lauren Harris was really really not my cup of tea. I let it all wash over me, knowing that the time of Iron Maiden was drawing near, and things could only get better.

Soon after she finally got off stage, a big push forward occured, and things were looking up. Some English guy was telling everyone to "Swim down!" á la Finding Nemo, but everyone seemed baffled - "Is that a song?" - "No, it's from Nemo. Have you not seen Nemo?" I guess not everyone had seen Nemo; I guess they were too young to have kids or something.

The roadies or whoever had put on Deep Purple while they did all the soundcheck for Maiden, and dried the front of the stage now that the rain had stopped, and the damp crowd started to get more and more rowdy as 21:00 neared.

Finally it started, firstly obscure B-side Doctor Doctor was played, followed by Transylvania, for which they displayed footage of Ed Force One and Maiden fans around the world from earlier legs of this tour on the big screens to either side of the stage. And then finally some World War II footage, as Churchill's War Speech was played. Everyone knew what came next...

Iron Maiden burst onto the stage, playing Aces High. This was followed by Wrathchild and then 2 Minutes to Midnight. Already by this time the crowd was moving, and I'd managed to get a little closer to the stage, maybe even a little closer to the middle. I wasn't sure I was as excited I should have been. It occured to me that Iron Maiden play basically perfectly, like it's a recording. Like it's a live recording. Like if you've watched a bunch of videos of their live performance, then you've already experienced this.

But then they stopped, and Bruce talked, and he said they were planning to play some tracks we wouldn't have heard that much except on record, and I had heard a rumour that they were planning some obscure stuff they don't play much for the NZ leg of the tour, and so it was that they decided to play Children of the Damned, and I threw my goats in the air and leapt for joy, and realised that really the only reason I hadn't got excited yet is because they'd just played like the three songs I'd least been interested in.

And the crowd moved some more, and I got closer and closer to the ideal position, and already everyone, already damp from the rain, was becoming damp from sweat as well, and people were already escaping from the front of the mosh-pit because it was just too hot. They followed Children of the Damned with Phantom of the Opera, and that was from awesome to awesomer in my opinion. Unfortunately that was as obscure as they got; the rest of the show was basically the setlist you would expect if you'd done any research about what they were playing on the Somewhere Back In Time tour.

So, we got The Trooper, Wasted Years, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Powerslave, Fear of the Dark, Run to the Hills, Hallowed be thy Name, Iron Maiden, and then an encore with The Number of the Beast, The Evil That Men Do, and Sanctuary.

Anyways, once I'd got into it, and the pit started to really go off, and everyone was drenched from head to toe in sweat, it was fantastic. The atmosphere, the fact that everyone was singing along to all the songs, the pyrotechnics, and the giant Somewhere in Time robot Eddie - just the perfect live act. They claim they'll be back, and are hoping for a crowd even larger than the 18000 they got.

k5k, Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault, It's Always Last Tuesday Somewhere, Beatmeter @ Wine Cellar, 6th January 2009

This was a last-minute kind of show; Eiterherd was still in the country, and word was spread by text message that possibly he was going to play again.

First up was k5k, who played a live noise set with his Nintendo DS. This was backed with some visuals created by Guy 7U?, freshly delivered to NZ by Eiterherd. Really entrancing stuff, but violent. I sat and drank the beer k5k had bought me, and sank into my chair; my head whirling with these evil fantasies I've been having lately, aided by noise and violent visuals..........

Next up I got to play, using P.P. Flo's laptop and Traktor software setup to mix up all my latest dupestep bass riddims and so forth. People sat and listened. I assume the visuals were still running. Add visuals to your music and people become like TV zombies.

Next up was the TV zombie specialists, Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault, making up for their unperformance a few nights ago. Every time I see them they've tweaked the visuals a little bit, but basically they've been doing the same show for over a year now. Still, there's always a new audience; tonight I guess this is for Eiterherd's benefit, so he can go back to Austria and rave about them to his colleagues.

There had been speculation of a Dubya Children Eaterz performance, but Creassault had to go home to bed, and took most of the hardware they were planning to borrow with him, so that scuppered that. Instead Beatmeter took to the decks with a stack of 7"s, playing some weird kinds of music quite unlike his usual sets of breakcore.

Eiterherd didn't end up playing. I ran into an old acquaintance of mine; said "Hello", told her I was here to see some noise and breakcore out in the back room. "So breakcore's a kind of music?" -- "Yes, it's like .. uh .. jungle .. or um ... IT'S BIG IN EUROPE!" That seemed to be explanation enough; that's what I'm sticking to as an explanation from now on...

Then I cruised outside and talked to P.P. Flo and Eiterherd, and slowly we inched further and further towards and then inside Area 26 where P.P. Flo lives, and Eiterherd showed us some video on his laptop called like Good Copy, Bad Copy or something, about sampling and copyright, and then Rewa and some dubstep DJ arrive also, and we all move out on the balcony and sit smoking and listening to Xian and in the case of those who were drunk, talking shit; and then suddenly it's all over, because P.P. Flo has work in the morning.

Eiterherd, 8bit kidd, k5k, p.p. flo, beatmeter, softsmell - Whammy Bar, 3 January 2009

Somehow in early 2009 everything was coming together; not just one but three top international artists coming. And first up is Austria's Eiterherd. P.P. Flo and Eiterherd are on the door, and Eiterherd is introduced to me.

I go and sit at the bar, drink some water, slowly realise that no one is going to buy me a drink tonight because they seem to be getting a steady supply to Eiterherd instead.

Softsmell, aka Rewa, is playing. I find out later it's her first solo show.

8bit Kidd I've never seen before. He plays Nintendo style music. So, not exactly hardcore, but interesting, listenable. I look over to Eiterherd to guage his reaction, and he seems to be enjoying himself. I start thinking about how interesting it must be to go to different cities and hear the kind of stuff other people are making.

Beatmeter played his usual breakcore set; I haven't ever told him, but he's good - he always plays a really solid set of premium breakcore in a way that no other DJ I've seen here does. I guess it's because he's got a good selection of vinyl that he brought over with him from the UK, or maybe because he's only a DJ, not a producer.

k5k played an awesome set, the best I've seen from him in ages. I believe this is mainly due to him playing his own material off his last album "Fakecore Fakecore Fakecore", which sounded incredible over this soundsystem. I guess that fact he was working at Whammy Bar and basically used their soundsystem to test the album while it was in production helped. To be honest it was the first time I've ever felt the bass in that venue.

Eiterherd followed k5k, and k5k turned up the volume, and it was great. Different. New. Very high quality. I danced and danced. I can see why he has this reputation; I can see why European breakcore is so much stronger than what we have here.

Incredible Hexadecibels were supposed to play, but there was some dramas with laptops or projectors or software or something and it just didn't happen all night. I sit at the bar again, drink some more water. I assume P.P. Flo was playing at this point, or maybe that was actually when Beatmeter was playing. These shows start to blur together after a while when it's always the same people. That's why it's so great to have international artists come to play here. Anyway, I'm left fully excited for the artists still to come...