vidu

Paul Di'Anno, Thirsty Dog, Auckland, 3rd July 2010 / Transmission Room, Auckland, 13th June 2009

2010-07-16T21:43:00.090+12:00

The first time I saw Paul Di'Anno was last year at the Transmission Room. The support band was World War IV if I remember correctly, and in places they reminded me of Incubus or RATM or something... just generally awful.... yeah, it was pretty cool to see some Iron Maiden songs, and yeah, the Australian backing band Killrazor were pretty tight... but Di'Anno had no presence on stage. I put this down to him having a busted knee and not being able to move. And the crowd were awful. Just awful. No moshing. Just like women in their late 40s standing at the front of the stage. I was stuck for quite a while standing behind some guy in a Motley Crue shirt. Who was just standing there. I dunno, for me metal doesn't work without a mosh-pit... or metal isn't working if the crowd doesn't feel the need to mosh... Di'Anno was kind of rude and obnoxious...

Fast-foward to 2010 and I guess a year had passed, and with this being a "30th Anniversary of the first Iron Maiden album" tour, where he would do every song off that album (and I really like that album), I was willing to give him another try... especially since Razorwyre were opening for him...

I got there early enough to see Dying of the Light. Although their music was technically competent and perhaps other people might like it if they were into that sort of thing, I found it very slow, and boring, and really offering nothing to me. When they played one faster song, I almost got excited.

Razorwyre (or Gaywyre) I had been hearing a lot of good things about, and I have to say they lived up to their reputation. Later that night I was telling anyone who would listen that they blew Paul Di'Anno off the stage. It's great that NZ finally has a world-class thrash metal band. Sure, they're derivative of all the big thrash bands of the 80s, but that's why they're great. I especially loved the vocalist's range. I will be seeing them again.

Paul Di'Anno then. Well, he did play all the songs off the first Iron Maiden album, which was interesting... but very early in the night I realised I'd made a mistake. There can only be one Iron Maiden, and I saw them in a packed stadium, not in some tiny pub with less than 100 people in it. You know that thing singers do, when they get the crowd to sing part of the chorus or something? When the 20 people down the front couldn't sing the lines he gave them loud enough for him to hear (I know, surprising, right?), the crowd was met with jibes like "Oh, I didn't know this was a gay bar" or "Oh, looks like another audience just like Melbourne" By the time he started playing AC/DC's Highway to Hell (after some big spiel about visiting Bon Scott's grave), I left the pub shaking my head. I won't be fooled again.

setlists:
Thirsty Dog show
Transmission Room show

Breakcore Island (part 2)

2010-02-15T12:26:00.004+13:00

The second round of Breakcore Island shows kicked off on Thursday 11th February with Escape the Bowels of Noise Island which was held at the Wine Cellar, again in St Kevin's Arcade.

I was playing at this one, so I got there very early and sat through a lot of sound-checks, most of which involved live sound engineer k5k having to tell Nomex to turn it down just a little more and a little more...

Yeah, Nomex made it to Auckland this time, and a lovely and dapper gentleman he was too. Robert Inhuman of US gabber-punk-noisecore outfit Realicide was also there. Robert was very impressive as he set up with lyric-sheet posters and stickers at the door to give away free to people. This is an old anarcho-punk trick that I've heard about but never seen done before - where you consider your message so important that you make sure that people can take it away with them; that they can participate. Particularly if you know your lyrics are going to be indecipherable. Everyone should do this really, but then when was the last time you saw an artist with a serious political message? Would you even know if you had?

The show started with ¡Recuerde! who performed a set of textured-and-layered noises, with some vocals even. I believe this is typical output from this artist. This was followed by my own set, which was a learning experience. Armed with a Casio SK-5, a discman to sample from and the kalimba I picked up in Uganda, I managed to not get too defeated by my own hardware, but when the microphone for the kalimba turned out to not be turned on at the mixing desk, I just gave up. Only Softsmell and Robert Inhuman were really paying attention anyways, so it's not like I lost some fans or something, and I learnt some things about the limitations of my hardware.

Anyway, what everyone was really here for was to see the fancy international acts, and first up was Realicide. This is where Robert Inhuman impressed again, as he greeted everyone, explained how excited he was to have come half-way around the world to be here; explained how this was the punk for right now and right here, not some retro guitar music; invited everyone to participate. This entailed pounding beats, noise, and very energetic but indecipherable vocals. Excitement. Energy. Those things that are lacking so often in this tiny scene. Infectious.

Nomex followed this up with brutal harsh noise, using a contact mic attached to a 12" vinyl that he ended up smashing, and some other device that he'd fashioned which was a kinda stick thing that he waved around. Certainly the most impressive noise set I've seen yet in my life.

Spent a few hours after the show hanging out with Robert and a group of other insiders at neighbouring Area 26, just talking about stuff. This guy is really right-on with his attitude and politics. He's living the dream, or at least a dream that I had that I couldn't realise for myself with my circumstances.

The next night, being Friday the 12th of February saw Return to the Conquest of Breakcore Island, which was another house party at a K' Road dive called The Brothel. House parties mean loading in your own sound-system, and for reasons that remain obscure, this involved me helping k5k lug big speakers up and down various flights of stairs.

Once the party finally got underway, it begun with N.U.T.E playing their industrial-metal. They are polished, professional... but for me too soft, too slow... I'm not their target audience, this stuff is for goths; allegedly they lap it up.

They are followed by Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault, and people dance, and for once everyone's eyes are on the Hexadecibels instead of their visuals, because the visuals are being projected on the wall behind the crowd instead of behind or beside the Hexadecibels like it usually would be; it gets me thinking about the lyric-sheet I got last night and of course actually bothered to read and think about, and the Realicide songs Everything is a Camera, and The Audience Sucks... contrasting approaches to music and interaction...

Realicide was brutal again, and in this smaller venue the audience was closer, and a spontaneous mosh-pit broke out, which was just what this sort of hardcore music needs. I'm deeply respectful of what this guy is doing. Nomex made sure that everyone in the crowd was given the lyric-sheet poster, which I believe speaks highly of him.

Nomex had the same set-up as the night before. This time, before his set started, I did the trainspotting kind of thing and went and looked what vinyl he was using. It was a Stiff Little Fingers 12". Anyway, this time Nomex had incorporated beats into his set, I guess via the laptop he had, so the set was more of a breakcore style, although still with massive noise running over the top. The vinyl got chucked on the floor and Robert and Nomex stomped on it a bit, before Nomex totally destroyed it by ramming it in this large gap in the floorboards. It was a good set from Nomex, although it was the kind of fractured breakcore that you can't really dance to that well. Which is fine. After the set was over I grabbed a chunk of vinyl off the floor as a souvenir.

The USA Kings, a Hungarian act that are also touring here for Breakcore Island were supposed to play next, but there was some sort of technical issue, so DJ Beatmeter ended up spinning records, as he had been between all the other sets. This continued for probably an hour or more, as everyone drifted away, but at this stage we were under the understanding that he might help unpack all the PA gear from the venue and get it safely back to where it belonged. Which didn't end up happening, so it came down on me again. Very late night...

These guys all flew down to Wellington the next day for a Saturday night show at the Happy venue, and when I spoke to Robert later he said it was probably the best show of the tour for him because it was the loudest.

Maybe there will be some more Breakcore Island events in March. The USA Kings still have to play sometime. Keep watching the sky....

Breakcore Island (part 1)

2010-02-14T22:14:00.010+13:00

Summer in Auckland means "Breakcore Island".. that time when international artists get poached from their Australian tours or from Camp a Low Hum and play a show at some K' Road dive. This is all we get in this faraway corner of the world.. it's lucky that the local talent is so good here..

The first show The Great Wall of Noise Island was on the Thursday night of 28th of January, a noise show in Alleluyah Cafe in St Kevin's Arcade; more specifically in the atrium outside the cafe, which was walled off from the rest of the arcade with sheets strung from a line. Nomex didn't show up after some sort of private drama, so Toecutter and last-minute addition Daedelus both agreed to play improvised sets at the last minute as replacements.

Joining them on the bill were long-time and establishished (establishment?) noise scenesters Duncan Bruce, and Richard Francis with Clinton Watkins. They played the sort of noise you would expect: Bruce more experimental, Francis & Watkins more harsh; all based on sounds and textures and stuff.

Also on the bill for their first time out together in several years was Tumour & Beard, two young men who previously played together as pioneering NZ breakcore outfit Anti-Kati. These guys are long term friends of mine, and to be honest I expected big things. Their set was instead more in line with what I had already heard that evening.. entirely adequate, particularly given the setting lovely atrium setting and the other artists on the bill, but once upon a time I feel like I could have relied on these guys to shred speakers. ..

The speakers did get shredded somewhere along the line, and Daedelus' set was rather quiet and possibly compromised because of that. The dude did a pretty good job of doing some glitchy beeps and blips and stuff; I'm fairly sure he doesn't usually roll like that.

Toecutter's set involved a short amount of harsh noises, a whole lot of incense, and ended with a piece involving Toecutter and several audience members, including myself, dragging tables across and around the atrium floor in a synchronised fashion under Toecutter's direction. Very interesting, although tables were broken and the cafe owner was a little annoyed; mainly at how profusely Toecutter apologised about it.

Directly following this show was the last-minute Daedelus Surfaces on Breakcore Island show at Whammy, which for those who don't know is also in St Kevin's Arcade. This had secured heavy radio promotion, and Whammy rapidly filled up with kids. Happy kids, who danced the night away to future music. P.P. Flo was followed up by Manaia Toa with DJ sets; Manaia Toa with his usual old-skool jungle kinda thing, P.P. Flo his regular pop/breakcore mash-up.

Toecutter was playing as DJ Anal Erection, which apparantly means he plays more dancefloor friendly stuff. The kids were loving it. About 1 in the morning or thereabouts, when the oh-so-punctual kids had been thus warmed up for a few hours, Daedelus did his thing. Someone had predicted somewhere on the spectrum between Ninja Tune and Tigerbeat6, and I guess that was some way to being accurate. Definitely it was somewhere on the spectrum between electro and dubstep which is where the kids are at these days if this crowd was anything to go by. k5k took me and Roxy Riot out the back behind the bar to this little broom-closet that the staff sometimes use. It was weird.

The crowd basically left after Daedelus' set; I didn't realise until much later that it was mainly to do with it being a Thursday night. Manaia Toa played a bit more and then k5k took the 3am to 4am floor-clearing set. k5k's fakecore is brutal and tight, and the test for whether NZ audiences truly get breakcore is whether or not they ever start staying to see a local master like k5k do his set.

The next night on Friday the 29th of January was The Curse of Breakcore Island at Area 26, again in St Kevin's Arcade. This was house party, at the same venue that Belgian breakcore poster-boy Sickboy rocked at this time last year.

I arrived in time to see Glottis, which I am led to believe are a two-piece who are one half of teenage rave crew Ponny Fight (who were who were billed to be playing) and one of their other mates. Glottis do throat-singing. There's video on youtube. Anyway, the lounge was filled with their parents and younger siblings (!) so I stayed at the door and talked with Toecutter and Softsmell and Creassault and Audioslut and the other long-term scenesters, and the family all field out, but I stayed there for Gee Gee who is some teenage MC who I assume is friends with Ponny Fight, and even manned the door for a while by myself which I always find kinda nerve-racking because it involves asserting your will over people and capitalism-like situations.

Eventually I filtered through the party, which at some point had become filled up with teenagers from the Shore who were all tripping on Saliva or Salvia or something (allegedly). Whatever, there were some messy people there. Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault ripped shit up, playing their European-tour-honed tracks off their forthcoming release. This was the first time I'd seen some of their new videos, and I was laughing on the dancefloor as they are filled with people that I know... I became overwhelmed with that feeling of elite and power you get when you have knowledge that other people on the dancefloor don't have... like when you know the chorus to It's Gotta Be the Shoes or when you suddenly remember the time like nine years ago when you went to a family dinner at P.P. Flo's house and his mother served this bolognese sauce with lots of tomatoes in it and Amy just won't eat tomatoes and didn't touch her meal and it was hella awkward. That really cracked me up. On the dancefloor. Good times.

Toecutter, who was also here last summer, ripped it up again. This is why he has a global reputation as the go-to good-time-party-breakcore DJ. Highlights for me would have to include Don't Cry; hell the whole thing was great really. It's a breakcore party. It was loud. At some point I was slam-dancing with myself in the hallway.

k5k did his usual crowd-clearing best. Dance-floor pretty much to myself. I went outside for a bit, took out my ear-plugs and realised just how shredding it was. Very cool. After his set we sat around on the balcony discussing the ramifications of the youth starting to come through and infiltrate our underground and elite scene/community.. the virtues of having an actual scene vs. having a best-kept secret... the sort of conversations you have late at night with drunk people... uncertain future... can change happen? can it be dealt with?

There was another show on the next night, at some shitty downtown bar that has a pentagram painted on the floor. N.U.T.E. played. Some goth bands played. I didn't go.

death of geocities

2009-11-28T22:07:00.003+13:00

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

2009-02-21T17:50:00.000+13:00

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

2009-01-07T18:37:00.004+13:00

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

2009-01-04T18:06:00.000+13:00

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...

N.U.T.E, Guitarmageddon, Incredible Hexadecibels, It's Always Last Tuesday Somewhere @ Whammy Bar; 26 July

2008-07-27T13:09:00.001+12:00

I found a carpark and arrived at the venue at 22:00, when it was opening. Town was dead already, at that hour. Some kinda storm or something. Very cold.

Anyway, the wonderful hardware setup involved a 5-disc CD changer out of a component stereo system
coupled with two turntables and a mixer that didn't last the night, but luckily worked fine for me.

Playing first is a blessing and a curse. Basically I knealt on the floor behind a makeshift table, with a borrowed breakcore record on one turntable and a CD of IALTS music I'd burnt just before I walked out the door to come here, and I had no idea of the tracklisting, so I just juggled these two items together as best as I could, and the results were just like they always were.

No one told me how my set was, I guess because no one really saw it. I was left with that feeling I often get after I play... that my songs, while sounding great when I'm sitting at home being an emo, don't really translate to a club environment...

Anyways, after my set I got a beer and went and sat in a corner, and k5k, who was DJing between other people's sets, was playing Laibach, and I just got this overwhelming wave of emo, and went outside... I was actually standing out there for about 20 minutes, wondering if I should just go home, but then Roxy Riot, guitarist from N.U.T.E, arrived and actually remembered me and acknowledged me even though we've only met once, and I decided maybe that was a sign I should stay.

After a really really long time, finally Guitarmageddon started playing, and I stood on the door talking to Drew, as they played tracks like Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and Devo's "Whip It" and other stuff that I didn't recognise. They're a covers band. I don't quite understand the point of them, but they are friends of the promoter, which is a great way to get on the stage. Besides, I don't quite understand the point of a lot of things.

Incredible Hexadecibels did their standard set of cut-up zombie films backed with video-game-sound-infected breakcore beats. Every time I see them they have added to and refined their video footage. It's
really something to see...

N.U.T.E were interesting; it was the first time I've seen them play. They claim to be one of the best industrial acts in the country, and I believe they earn that title. They also had backing visuals made by the Incredible Hexadecibels, and were playing some new material that new member P.P. Flo had co-written. I would recommend them to anyone interested in that kind of thing, and of course you can do that for free by downloading their stuff from God Rekidz.

migration

2008-06-19T23:02:00.004+12:00

vidu
... has been running since roughly the year 2000
... mainly contained a series of music reviews; mainly of breakcore shows
... as such was basically a blog
... is migrating all archived material here; hopefully creating new content also
... is pleasantly suprised they'll let us back-date posts, so it's all sorted...

vain ignorant diatribes unltd

2008-06-19T22:56:00.000+12:00

varg industries destroys the underground
varg industries documents the underground
vampires in diamond underpants
victory is a dying unicorn
vapid inchoate digital utterings

borderline music festival @ whammy bar & the wine cellar, auckland; sunday 23rd march

2008-03-24T00:04:00.001+13:00

Buzzily enough, as I stood at the bar after arriving talking to Creassault about how I'm not Squee and drinking the beer he so kindly bought me, I suddenly saw Rorn's uncle. This was like Easter Sunday, in one of the only bars open; guess he needed a drink.

First up after I arrived were the New Telepathics, a kinda jazzy guitar-based indie band. k5k said they were like Mars Volta. I say they coulda been cool around 1993. So probably they could be hot right now, if the current 1993-like trend of check shirts is anything to go by.
Instead I went and checked out Sam Hamilton in the Wine Cellar making guitar feedback noise.

Some random dude engaged me in a conversation about Iron Maiden, I guess since I was wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt.

Me and k5k stepped outside for a minute and then it was time for what I came to see: the Incredible Hexadecibels vs Creassault are fantastic multimedia: cut-up video games and zombie movies interspersed wtih live-action zombie scenes filmed by the artists themselves, all with a live video-game/fakecore mash-up soundtrack. I stood close to the screen and marvelled.

Following that was k5k doing a DJ set of breakcore, playing Venetian Snares and so on from his
large vinyl collection.

Incredible Hexadecibels vs Creassault, Gei, Sorry see Saw, Anti-Kati, Nigel Wright @ Wine Cellar, Fri, Nov 23

2007-11-24T15:23:00.000+13:00

I cruised into the city on the bus, keen to see the Incredible Hexadecibels. The Wine Cellar is a cute little venue, with couches and stuff to sit on while you listen.

Gei was one-man-drone, using a guitar. A lot of people do this style of music, even just in this city. I cannot say it was any better or worse than any other I have seen.

DJ Nigel Wright played some music in between sets, including some DHR stuff if I recall correctly.

Sorry See Saw - in the lead up to this they were known as "unnamed super group (feat. 7 members from more than 30 bands)" - consisted of some random people, none of whom I really recognised, except for Erika, who is k5k's girlfriend. She did vocals and played a conch shell. They played some rock-based music.

Incredible Hexadecibels vs Creassault was great. Combining video and audio together is mesmerising, just like television. It helps that both the audio and video are top quality. I had to run out just before the end to catch the last bus, but it sure left me wanting to see it again...

DJ Olive, Anti-Kati, D-Form, Manaia Toa, Wilberforce, Bombadrop @ Galatos, Auckland; Friday 16 Feb

2007-02-18T22:56:00.001+13:00

I managed to get to this right on time; Anti-Kati had told me they were starting at 10pm sharp. I mean, they didn't, but that was good. We chatted a bit and then they played. They'd managed to get one of those fancy Serato systems for the night. They played a pretty standard kind of set, with tracks off their latest 12", and stuff that hadn't been released at that point and so on..

After their set, Wilberforce and Bombadrop seemed to be racking up the tracks; they were playing kinda dubby and bassy stuff. I spent this time mainly hanging out downstairs/outside, having conversations.

Manaia Toa arrived, to my surprise that's Manaia Toa aka Splash aka Aotearoa Battle Soundz aka End Of Man. Well anyway, he's well into his dubstep, he played a lot of that, alternating with some jungle, and then he drops some jazz, Coltrane I think it was, and I turn to Anti-Kati and I say to them "If you ever wanted someone to play jazz at your event, why don't you just let me play?"

Quite a crowd had built up by this point, and DJ Olive started playing. None of us really had any idea what he was going to be like. I mean, googling him seemed to suggest he was "cool" and a "turntablist". In fact k5k told me he'd seen a little of him the night before at a little show down at the Wine Cellar. Anyway, tonight this guy was playing some kind of like tribal kinda house music. I swear he sounded exactly like DJ Food circa Jazz Brakes vol. 4 or something, which is good for house music, but it is 2007. God knows what New York must be like if this is the example.

It was really a pretty strange line-up, but the bar had filled up with people and some random square-as looking people in their 40s were down the front raving it up. Me and MC slypussy and his girl Rewa were sitting on these couches laughing hard. And then me and my MC made her dance up the front with them. I was still laughing hard, but it was hard to read how Rewa felt about it. Dancing real stupid and looking stupid, to my mind, beats (for example) the people I saw standing against a wall nursing a drink and kinda scowling.

DJ Olive must have played for at least an hour. And then D-Form arrived, and played some commercial hip-hop for a while. I just really used this time to catch up with my acquaintances, as I don't get out much these days.

All in all it was a pretty good night, and certainly one of the stranger Anti-Kati shows I have been to. But really, give DJ Olive a miss if he comes to your town.

Keith Fulerton Whitman @ St James, Auckland; Hrvatski @ Wine Cellar, Auckland; Elektrode:Nina RK @ Ibiza, Auckland; Saturday 29 April

2006-05-09T22:48:00.000+12:00

So anyway, some random chick named Karina contacted me through discogs asking about the Auckland breakcore scene. And then on this same day Anti-Kati were contacting me saying that Hrvatski was playing and I should come. So as I was riding the bus into town to meet Anti-Kati I was texting this Karina and telling her about this show, but it turned out she worked at the venue and already knew.

I met Anti-Kati on Symonds Street, and they gave me some beer and we walked down to AUT and found somewhere quiet to smoke and drink and talk. Then we walked down to the venue. It was in a side room of the St James, and we arrived just in time for the Keith Fulerton Whitman set to be starting. We scored a spot down the front. This room was like carpeted, and people were sitting and lying on the floor.

We chilled out, let the noise wash over us. When you were lying on the floor you could feel the bass under you, while the high frequencies floated above you. It was quite magical.

After he had finished, he invited all interested audio geeks to come and check out his equipment and he talked to them for a while. We texted Karina, to meet up with her. Word was Keith was heading up to the Wine Cellar to play a show as Hrvatski. She was already on her way there, but came back to meet us. We walked up Queen St together.

I have a feeling she was also headed up there anyway to see Fandaby Dozi play, my memory is hazy but I'm pretty sure this was the night we met him. Anyway, Hrvatski played a short set off his laptop. Me and slypussy did some dancing. It was over too soon really.

Then slypussy tells me that Koil is running his goth-EBM-industrial-hardtekno night called Elektrode just up the road at Ibiza, and we should check it out, because there is a lot of black-light-glow-in-the-dark cybergoths there, and they play hardkore tekno there. It turns out that the real reason he wants to go there is to see the DJ, hot goth chick Nina RK.

We go into Ibiza, and they're playing like Vengaboys and stuff, and me and slypussy bump and grind for a bit. There's no sign of the Elektrode night. We go back to the Wine Cellar to look for k5k, but it's all over, so we go to K' Road Ballroom, and slypussy buys us some beer, and there's a jukebox that costs no money, so we queue up some music like Wham!, and then before we leave we queue up a bunch of Alanis Morisette and shit like that, for some other suckers to have to listen to.

We head back to Ibiza and work out that there's an upstairs, and we blag our way in without paying by saying we're just looking for our mate k5k, and there's only about 10 people there, and Nina RK is playing some hardcore tekno, CoretexLabs kinda stuff appearantly, and me and slypussy bump and grind some more with the about 3 other people on the dancefloor.

and eventually it's all over.

DEL, White Saucer, Dean Roberts @ kings arms, auckland; 4 march

2005-03-05T22:37:00.000+13:00

I arrived at about 22:00, maybe a bit after, and Lasse Marhaug (star of DEL) himself was at the door, selling vast quantities of vinyl and CDs, which I didn't have money for. Although I did make sure I had the money to purchase the limited tour 8". I paid for my entry, got my stamp and then took my vinyl back to my car, and moved my car closer to the venue, because it turned out there was parking right outside it.

I went inside and managed to find a comfy chair to sit in, which was sweet, better than I was hoping for. Some DJ, or maybe a team were playing weird music. Eventually Dean Roberts took the stage. He had an electric guitar and some effects, and played some slow, droney music with it, and sang a little, I don't know what about, but it was basically terrible, it made me think that if people will buy that kinda shit I should try making some, because it didn't look hard.

I got some water, sat back down, the DJ(s) played some more weird music, I guess they were going for that kinda art-school-found-sound-faux-noise kinda vibe. Then White Saucer came on, a two-piece consisting of a drummer and a very hairy guitarist who kept his back to the audience and all his hair over his face mainly. White Saucer were noisy, it was pretty interesting. The guitarist made layers of noise, while the drummer played in a continuous roll kinda style, tribal, not your regular 4/4 rock beat. Towards the end the drummer stopped and the guitarist used effects and a keyboard or something to create a layer of noise, before the drummer kicked back in with a rock beat to great effect.

DEL took the stage about 00:30, a drummer and a guitarist, and a guy who sat on the floor and sometimes played guitar, and Lasse Marhaug who also had a guitar but wasn't playing it in a conventional style. They billed themselves as "possibly the best drone-noise-lofi-out-rock band from the north pole", and maybe that's a good description. They were droning, as they played their guitars with bows and so on, while the drummer went between rocking beats and mellow, almost jazzy rimshot combinations. I didn't stay to see their whole set, I was too hungry and tired, but they were exactly what I expected. Check them out if they come again.

MASS CONFUSION: Squee, Anti-Kati, Creassault, Flick, Audioslut, DJ Monkey Cunt, Males Kort @ Odeon Lounge, Auckland; 7 January

2005-01-08T22:31:00.002+13:00

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.

Quidam - Cirque de Solail, Auckland

2005-01-02T22:26:00.001+13:00

I got some tickets to this circus for xmas, and wasn't disappointed. Easy parking, and a nice big circus tent made the atmosphere cruisy and fun. We got seated on uncomfortable little chairs (what else) that were not exactly in the best viewing position, and waited.

The clowns got things rolling, as people were still coming in, and then once the show started it was all French weirdness, like watching a cool French movie like City of Lost Children or something. The performers were very skilled and professional, the clowns genuinely funny, and the fact they use a live band was a nice touch.

The intermission was much needed, and we slunk out for an ice-cream, before coming back in for another, much briefer, dose of mad circus.

All in all, a great experience, although at about $100 a ticket, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone who hasn't got rich relatives/friends who want to shout them to it.

Revolver, Augustino, Nephew @ The Studio, K'Road, Auckland;Thursday 15 July

2004-07-16T22:20:00.000+12:00

This was like the opening night of The Studio, and I won tickets off the Export Gold website. I don't know why I bothered entering, I guess I just like to win stuff. I kinda think they were just telling everyone who bothered to enter that they won though, so that the place would fill up and have a buzz going on for it's opening night. I mean, who would've been so stupid as to spend the $10 they were asking on the door to see these no-name fucking bands??!!

No one wanted to go with me, so I practically had to beg Dymo to come with me. The e-mail they'd sent telling me I'd won, and the lady who'd rang me to tell me I'd won were very very specific that the doors opened at 19:30 and the gig started at 20:00. I've heard bullshit like that before, but I figured it'd start by about 20:30 if they were so insistant it would start early, and got there around 20:15. Of course, it was utter bullshit. Not only that, they kept everyone out in this shitty little front bar, which slowly filled to the brim. It had fuck-all seating, and me and Dymo had to content ourselves with leaning against a wall until they finally let us into the main area at about 21:30.

Export Gold has a big controlling interest in this bar, and so when you walk into the main area it's in the revolting Export Gold colour scheme of brown and gold. The bar was down one wall, the big stage was at front, and there was absolutely no seating. The two upstairs levels which did have seating were off-limits, and I was pretty fucked off and thinking I really shouldn't have bothered coming, and I kept apologising profusely to Dymo for dragging him out to this.

Nephew came on about 22:00 - it was the singer from Goodshirt playing solo with a guitar and some kinda synthy-electronic kinda thing. He was shit, really, and he had to keep looking at his fret-board every time he changed chord. He finished off with a song off the new Goodshirt album, which was being released the next week, and the whole thing felt like some really unconvincing ad.

Next up were Revolver. People were dancing a little, and grooving and nodding their heads, and I thought "You're all fucking mental. This is so lame and tired". Revolver are yet another one of those rock bands, a five-piece with a keyboard player. What I didn't get, as they pranced around the stage with their bland fucking songs, is why they think that they, a no-name rock band that no one has even heard of, should have the right to walk around the stage striking classic stereotypical rock-god poses? Their songs didn't even have any hooks!

Needless to say, me and Dymo left before they'd even finished. It was late, and lame, and we had better places to be.

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

2003-12-13T22:11:00.002+13:00

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

2003-12-07T17:56:00.003+13:00

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

2003-11-27T17:51:00.002+13:00

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

2003-09-14T17:44:00.002+12:00

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

2003-06-21T17:31:00.002+12:00

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 up 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

2003-06-09T17:20:00.002+12:00

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.

After about an hour, certainly no more than 90 minutes, I needed and 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

2003-06-08T17:15:00.001+12:00

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

2003-03-08T17:12:00.001+13:00

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.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING WEIRD: hell fuckin rumble, the cortinas, disintering diana@ valve, wellington

2002-07-05T17:07:00.002+12:00

Friday night found me in Wellington, drinking with Rorn, my sister Lenny and my father. And so we cruised to Valve, just in the nick of time to catch the first act, Disintering Diana. This band had been really hyped to me, so I was keen to hear them.

I was told to expect noise, with crazy tape loop samples. I went up front and danced, but I couldn't really get my groove on. Live kinda Industrial-Metal beats from Tyran on drums, and distorted guitar, with occasional screams from Ben was OK, but it really needed something else: and when some helpful soul turned the tape to a volume you could hear it in the mix, things sounded halfway good: pity this happened during the last song! All up, a good first performance marred by terrible mixing and stuff: I expect good things from these two in the future.

After this I had to pop out of the venue for a while to see Rorn (who'd flagged the gig), when I came back the Cortinas were playing. I was told they're from out of town, maybe Palmerston North. It was synth-rock-pop, kinda like the b-52s, so Lenny was well enjoying it. I found I did too, even though it isn't my bag. I found a dollar in my pocket and played some Bay Watch pinball.

Next up were Hell Fuckin Rumble, who it seems a lot of people are quite chuffed with these days. I can see why. Noisey garage rock-noise played by three girls is a good idea, and they do it well. Still, it was getting late, and I had to get going.

Me and Rorn and Lenny went clothing-binning on the way home though, only to find that they'd all just been emptied. And then to get pulled up by the cops, breath-tested (I passed) and randomly harrassed (have you ever heard of an officer wanting to test your headlights?) before being let go. Maybe I shoulda stayed and seen the last band...

jungle_vomit_kore: k5k, hakaider, audioslut, males kort @ K'Road Ballroom, Auckland; 19 April

2002-04-20T17:01:00.000+12:00

Once again a lot of problems getting it there, but even though we started late it turned out to be just the right time to get the punters. A reviewer from Real Groove magazine turned up [and appearantly wrote a shonky and inaccurate review].

Hakaider was first. His last show in New Zealand for a long time, as he was leaving for Ireland on Sunday morning, and of course he pulled out a typically polished performance.

k5k was up next, the PA was fucked and didn't really do him justice. After that Hakaider played some of his Rayden stuff, which is more mellow and Drum'n'Bass-like, "to bring it back down after k5k's crazy shit".

And then finally it was my go. My sister Lenny Sparkles had come up from Wellington especially, which was great, because it meant someone bothered to dance [the punters having been largely scared away by k5k]. I played a set I was really happy with, but unfortunately at the end of the night it turned out that the mini-disc hadn't been recording!

Audioslut followed me, with a very long set, more than enough for me and Lenny to go to the park for a cigerette and come back and still do heaps of dancing. I was quite impressed by the stuff he was playing: the bass seemed just right [i.e. pounding] for the first time all night, but that may have been because I'd had a break outside...

After he left k5k and Hakaider spent a little while battling each other, but the bar was closing and all the punters were gone, so we packed up and went home. Still, it was a bigger success than the last event, and it'll only get better in the future.

get, set, go! girl rock fest: the liva queens, the carnys [and more] @ grey lynn community centre, auckland

2002-03-02T16:53:00.002+13:00

Yay, another all-girl event in Auckland, and this time without even using the word "punk"... The usual suspects then, including those voted cool enough to come up from Wellington, my good friends the Liva Queens and the Carnys.

Lenny Sparkles, the ghetto fabulous vocalist for the Liva Queens arrived on Friday night. There was no sign of Little Dan, their drummer. We got a text message from k5k the next morning, confusingly, because the text was from Little Dan, saying something about how he'd slept on a wooden bench in the changing rooms of the swimming pools at Auckland Boys Grammar!! Further investigation found that this particular hobo had somehow sent the text to the wrong Lenny. We got it sorted out and he arrived here at about 12:00.

The gig was scheduled for 14:00, and we mucked around for quite a while, until it became more like 13:00, and we suddenly realised we should hurry up, because it was likely that the Liva Queens would have to play first, and they still had to get drunk first. They were both very nervous, thinking about throwing it all in... playing in Auckland hasn't gone very well for them in the past... the (lack of) crowd response gets them down...

So we cruised round the corner to the community centre, and parked in the carpark. We could see that there were a few people setting stuff up, and I went and asked them, and found that somehow they'd been upgraded to playing second, and this meant that they had a whole extra half hour to get drunk.

So the next step was to walk to the alcohol store, where we got two dozen beers and a bottle of whiskey. It was at about this point that I realised I was the sober driver and that it might just be a long day...

Anyway, by the time the Liva Queens were due to play, they'd both had a few drinks, and quite a large crowd had built up. The third member Lisa Lucifer [also in the Carnys] came out to find them and get them to soundcheck. The equipment was set up in a room that opened up onto a playground, which in turn opened onto the carpark. They'd put signs on the gate into the playground telling people to go around the front of the building: so that they could charge them $10. I wasn't gonna pay that just to see my sister play, and cruised through the gate with them, looking like I belonged. I was very nervous of incurring the wrath of these feminist punk-type girls.

They took a long time, as Little Dan had to drink a few more beers, and Lenny had to go have a smoke. I took a few photos, and encouraged Little Dan to warm up playing breakbeats and jazzbreaks: he'd been joking about sabotaging the performance with them. Cobra Killer was playing on the PA: the album is four years old, but somehow because they toured they're somehow a little popular here now.

Anyway, the time came. Lenny really hates that because they're always one of the first bands, noone will dance for them. It makes her nervous and think that noone likes them. I can't help but concur with her: it's pretty much a diss not to dance for a band. So I made an effort to dance [as I always do] like they were the most exciting thing since 9-11, and luckily some of her friends bothered too. None of the Auckland crowd though: they just stood there.

It was a good set, really quite tight, especially considering that they hadn't practised since they last played in Auckland several months before. And then we were out of there, and more drinks were had. Rorn had picked up some strange gothic guy who had a large tin filled with very nice stuff, and the party was really rolling.

Our friends from Wellington would drift over to us between the bands. Adam was excited to see Crystal and the Teenage Beauty Queens, which I gathered seemed to have the Sound Laydee drumming for them (???). By the time they all came back from that, Little Dan was vomiting in the bushes.

They took off to Vicious Irene as well, very excited, and from what I could hear from where I stood they might have been quite good: but really, who knows... Things were getting a little messy as everyone was becoming quite wasted, and suddenly I had this feeling that I should go inside. I met Tyron coming out, and he said that yes, the DJ I had seen setting up earlier was playing now, and he was playing Aphex Twin. This I was most interested in seeing, and, being unable to work out how to open the gate, I strode around to the front and boldly walked through the door right in front of the people collecting money.

He was playing Bomb20, as I'd somehow suspected he might, and I danced my mad style in the almost empty room, which drew strange looks from the few people who walked through. I was trainspotting, watching every record as he pulled out DJ Scud, Patric C, and Atari Teenage Riot on his very new and expensive looking decks. His records weren't very obscure, and his mixing was pretty atrocious [that is, one song stopped, there was a pause, and then the next one started], but he obviously had some sort of interest in Hardcore Electronic, because you can't exactly buy those records in the shops here. He would come out from behind the decks occasionally, drinking his cheap beer and listening to the sound: which, being a guitar-orientated PA, had no bass and did the tracks no justice.

At the conclusion of his set I was keen to talk to him, but Rorn intervened. But then he ended up coming and talking to the strange goth that Rorn had found, and so it was that I met Trevor, the gothic DJ. He was a little drunk, but I managed to explain to him that there was a small Hardcore scene here in Auckland, and it turned out that he'd heard of k5k, Anti-Kati, and A-Klass Rekidz, and was keen. I told him to send an e-mail if he wanted to hook up sometime...

Anyway, Little Dan was still very sick, and Rorn and Lenny were starting to look like I should get them home. Lenny was keen to stay and see the Carnys, who have now reached the stage where they command second-to-last position, but we decided that it really wasn't a good idea. We carried Little Dan into the van, and then cruised off home.

We dropped him off on a couch where he fell straight back asleep, and then went out to get some food. The evening was spent very quietly, and that was the end of that.

Shapeshifter @ QE II Square, Auckland

2002-01-25T16:50:00.001+13:00

Natas was visiting A/K, and so I cruised downtown with him to catch Shapeshifter. He was well keen. We arrived just in time to catch the end of Greg Churchill's set. He's a very good House DJ, he really had the crowd jumping. Why not? The council had made it free again, as part of their ongoing Dancing in the Streets campaign.

We braved the cue in a conveniance store to get some water, and came out as the MC was introducing Shapeshifter. We moved into the crowd, waited a few songs and then moved a little deeper, and eventually found ourselves in a gap, centrestage, where we got down to dancing. I was looking around, at all the building surrounding the square, and I suddenly got really paranoid of snipers on the rooftops: I keep thinking at the oddest moments that it's suddenly gonna be the start of the New World Order. I also noticed that you can only see about 11 stars in the sky when you're downtown: that's just shitty.

Shapeshifter were very good, playing as a four-piece live Drum'n'Bass combo. A drummer, and three guys twiddling nobs and playing synths; one who occasionally played guitar, and one who spent most of the first half of the show playing saxophone.

They played well to the crowd (the figure we were given was 4500 people), dropping in lots of sax breaks. It was kinda pop and derivative, covering lots of different variations in jazzy Drum'n'Bass, but the crowd was lapping it up. And these guys were obviously skilled musicians, as they kept up their pace, building up at the end with an MC going bananas, lots of rave-synth breaks, and a fat bass sound. Of course I was thinking that I would have chosen to turn the nobs just a little bit further and make a noise, but these guys knew their audience and were aiming for a popular sound, so I can see why they didn't.

Appearantly the album is nothing on their live show, so maybe see them if they're in your town.

peaches, cobra killer, the pussies @ FU, Queen Street, Auckland

2002-01-17T23:38:00.000+13:00

Both me and k5k saw posters for this a week or two in advance, but we'd both thought "Surely that can't be the Cobra Killer, from Germany, formerly on the legendary DHR label. Must just be some Hard-Trance DJ with the same name". Two days before we discussed the possibility of it being a coincidence, and so we checked the FU Bar website, and found that it WAS them.

So, on Thursday night, me and k5k and Edward Denton headed downtown. The tickets said 23:00, the bar's website said 22:30, so we were a little disappointed when we arrived to find that we'd have to wait until 23:30.

This meant sitting on Queen Street, luckily not too full of munters. Eventually we cruised back to the venue. We walked in, and were assaulted with a throng of people. They did not look like your typical FU Bar crowd: instead of ravers, there were a few Punks that I recognised (the anarcho-feminist ones), and a whole bunch of "alternative" types with their dreadlocks and funky clothes. The dead giveaway was that they were all at the bar being drunk rather than being on raver party drugs.

While k5k went to the bar to talk to people he knew, me and Herr Denton went down the back and found a seat on a large sub. k5k presently joined us, and we got to sit lamenting the DJs music choice and discussing the likelihood of anyone who is here actually having any idea who Cobra Killer (or Peaches for that matter) are, considering that there is no coverage or distribution of German hardcore style music in this country. There could obviously have been lots of people who were in the know, but considering how much it was promoted on student radio and the way that the crowd looked like students... Not that it really mattered, they were about to find out at any rate.

So anyway, first onstage were the Pussies, a local band that I'd never heard of. Either everyone was already really drunk, or a lot of them were friends of the Pussies, because the crowd went really wild. They were a four-piece all-girl band. A vocalist, synths/backing vocals, mellodica/backing vocals, and a drummer. Maybe there was more of them: they were kind of obscured by a pillar that was holding up the ceiling; maybe they had some other instuments too. All their songs consisted of synths that sounded like Type O Negative, and either the live drummer or a drum machine playing the same beat right throughout the song (when the drum machine was going the drummer just sat there playing a tambourine or looking bored). The mellodica was mostly too low in the mix to hear, and vocals weren't too hot either. Still, they sounded like a kind of gothic Lounge band, so it was pleasant enough to listen to.

The DJ was back after they finished; he seemed to only be playing female artists, so there was stuff like Missy Elliot, and other such riot girls. I watched as a lady in a trenchcoat and ridiculous stiletto heels set up some equipment on the stage [it was Gina].

And then after a while, it was time. Gina and Annika came out in matching trenchcoats, and they were both in really fucking big heels. Annika was holding a bottle of wine, which she was skulling from. They introduced themselves, with their really lovely accents. Their music was really fantastic: cut-up samples and beats combined with crazy 60s organ. They were playing a CD through a little mixer, and then singing over the top. The crowd was going really wild. They started pouring wine all over each other, and then throwing rice and ice into the crowd. The girls down the front were very excited, and so also was some strange long-haired guy, who seemed to be trying to grope them.

They were dancing around crazily in their heels on a now very wet and slippery stage, but somehow they managed to stay stable. They even jumped into the crowd, which really just got them groped by the girls and the boys. Personally I wouldn't have jumped into such a drunk crowd. It was madness, but it was really going off. At one point Annika kind of collapsed and rolled off the stage and under it, right in front of me and k5k. She lay there for a while, having a rest.

Finally, at the end of the show, they said "We have just one more song. Carl Crack is no longer with us anymore. He is dead", and I got kinda excited, because I figured they were gonna play an Atari Teenage Riot song as a tribute, but then they couldn't find the disc. A bit of an anti-climax.

They disappeared through the crowd. Me and k5k wanted to give them some CDs, seeing we are the local Digital Hardcore scene, and we figured that we would give it to them when they came back to clear up their equipment, but then someone else packed it up, and so we took off outside to see if we could find them.

They were not out on Queen Street, but I did take the opportunity to buy myself a cookie and eat it too. Then we headed back inside, and straight away bumped into Annika. We loaded her up with CDs, which she said her and Gina would listen to back at the hotel room. Gina was standing at the bar: I think that the long-haired gropey guy from down the front was buying her a drink. But she disappeared before we could talk to her.

Peaches was just starting up. She looked much more gothic than the promotional material had led us to believe (the bar's website said she only wore hot pink), dressed in black PVC and a dog collar and teased hair. We watched her for a few songs. Her voice was alright, and the music was Techno-ish. But for us, we had seen what we came to see, and so we went home.

rave it up 2002: animal intelligence, hydrau1ik, k5k, hakaider, dj males kort @ K'Road Ballroom, Auckland

2002-01-06T04:28:00.001+13:00

This was finally it: the first official Hardcore gig in Auckland, being promoted by k5k and his A-Klass Rekidz. There were a lot of problems getting it there, but it was all right on the night!!

Hakaider just kept some discs spinning until the two Australian DJs (from Hardline Rekordingz, Perth) turned up, and then it was decided that I should be first. I played a messy [read: fantastic] set mainly consisting of my own Salsacore stuff. Somehow this coincided with pretty much everyone I knew who was going to be there being there, and they all clapped at some stage [I really hope I didn't hallucinate that].

Anyway, Hakaider went on after my set, and I went and sat outside in this little foyer between the gig and the poolhall where they had all these couches, and chatted to Dymo and Funboy. Presently this roaming anarchist who I'd invited because he was in town showed up, and so me and Danyl ended up having a long chat.

I extracted myself to go and have a dance every once in a while. Seeing as I had the dance floor pretty much to myself it was fantastic. It's great to jump around madly to this insane broken beat hardcore. k5k was going off on the decks with his new dubplates he'd had made for this very purpose.

And then one of the Australian DJs was on. Animal Intelligence was almost a let down after all the breaking beats that had been going on. He was playing straight-up Hardcore Techno, which I just find harder to dance to. And there wasn't enough bass!! But he was very good. Still, after an extended Hip-Hop breakdown, followed by the song "Don't want no short-dicked man", me and Danyl took off across the road, to get a snack, and ended up sitting outside Departure Lounge playing chess and listening to House music.

Eventually I came back, but Danyl had had enough. Hydrau1ik was playing, and I liked his set a bit better. Eventually it was over, and the Australians packed up and left. There was only a little while until the bar closed at 03:00, so k5k played it out, and then we packed it up and went home.

Megadeth, just one fix @ Saint James Theatre, Auckland

2001-08-09T16:17:00.003+12:00

Thursday rolled around, and it was another glorious sunny day. I spent a little bit of it listening to my Megadeth records, but mainly I was busy. Around about 18:30 I started to get ready. I chose blue jeans, a Harley Davidson t-shirt that my sister gave me, and my blue denim jacket with the cut-off sleeves and the Anthrax and Celtic Frost patches. It was a perfect Metal outfit: if I was in the 80s. I got Rorn to spike up my bi-hawk and spray it with that evil hair-spray shit.

Eventually it was getting close to being time to leave, and so Rorn decided that I should take her to k5k's for the night. This was all fine, and so I took her there. With the benefit of hindsight I should have stayed there longer, but instead I hurried away, because the doors opened at 19:30.

I drove into town and parked by the university, then walked down to the Saint James. Outside were crowds of bogans, more than I'd seen anywhere for a very long time. I wasted no time entering, and found that it was full of bogans inside as well, most of them standing by the bar.

I'd never been in the St James before, but I found that it was really really beautiful: a grand old theatre. I found myself a spot on the sloping floor; leaning on a pillar that was holding up the balcony. It turned out that I was in for a long wait: a lesson to myself for turning up on time. I amused myself by looking around at all the amusing bogans. It was good, but standing on the spot was killing me. Looking back now, I kinda wish I'd had money for beer. Actually, I was probably thinking that as I stood there.

It was about 20:30 before the support band came on. I couldn't quite believe it: it had seemed like the longest wait ever. I'd never heard of this band, but that's not surprising: in this country support bands often seem to come from complete obscurity to manage to get a spot supporting international acts: it really makes you wonder who knows who.

Anyway, this band were called Just One Fix, and I'm guessing from their sound that they were raised on early 90s Metal, such as the Ministry album «Psalm 69» that contains the song they're most probably named after, Pantera's «Vulgar Display of Power», Megedeth's «Countdown to Extinction» and Metallica's black album. They were quite great: it's not often these days that you hear a band with such an old-school sound. They were also really excited to be there supporting Megadeth, and mentioned that often, which made the crowd roar. They also got the crowd to roar by singing songs about smoking dope. And they got a sizeable mosh-pit going down the front. All in all I think they did very well for themselves.

They played until maybe 21:10, and then we had to wait a while longer, until at about 21:30, when Megadeth hit the stage!!! I was very excited: this was the first time I'd ever seen a band that I actually liked and knew the songs of. And Dave Mustaine's hair was just as luxurious and shiny in real life as it looks in the photos!!!

Everyone rushed forward, and I started to make my way forward too. I came across an all too familiar dilemma: my passage to the mosh-pit was blocked by a whole lot of very large people who had no intention of moshing, and no intention of moving. I wasn't in too much of a hurry: they started with first one, and then another new song.

But by the third song, they were launching into «Wake Up Dead», and I was starting to get the impression that I should have used my waiting time to check the venue out, because I was getting the impression that where I was trying to wade to the front, there was actually a railing, and the mosh-pit was actually on a lower level. When I'd worked all this out, «In My Darkest Hour» was over, and I found it remarkably quick and easy to move to the side of the theatre and down the ramp to the mosh-pit during some new song with the drum solo tacked on the end of it: I even found it quite easy to work my way into it.

I found myself next to a guy who seemed to have a really crazy girlfriend: she would run out from his arms and wildly smash into someone, arms flailing madly, then he'd drag her back, in an endless flowing cycle. Maybe she was just really excited. The mosh pit was great: I just can't seem to enjoy guitar music without the contact with other people. I arrived in time for «Devil's Island», and couldn't quite believe my luck. I was having the time of my life.

They followed this with «Moto Psycho», and then Dave stopped to talk about how he "always gets himself in trouble" - with his mouth it turns out, as he launched into the anti-censorship song «Hook in Mouth».

This was followed by «Angry Again» off the «Last Action Hero» soundtrack, and then a blistering version of «Hanger 18». This was dynamite stuff to mosh to. He stopped again to tell us a story about how he'd been in Australia, and a taxi driver who was driving them to dinner had said "G'day" when it was night time and how stupid the taxi-driver was, and I wondered if he'd been advised to do this by someone who knew about the Australian-New Zealand rivalry that everyone buys into in this part of the world.

Anyway, all his talking led into «Sweating Bullets». At this stage there were these two guys in front of me, both in blue jeans and white t-shirts, and with long blond hair. I heard one say to the other one something about how some faggot had been pinching his arse. I found it really amusing, because I could see how they'd look like girls from behind. [Although I find it really fucked that people grope women in mosh pits].

Not too long after that, one of those big drunk guys came along. Maybe you know the ones: they put their arm around your neck, and then drag you on their quest to be a human battering ram. Anyway, I could take it, I've seen worse at Punk gigs, and I even managed to somehow disentangle myself from him and get away with just being a point on his manic crash-course. Anyway, he started smashing into the back of those two blond boys. I watched with fascination as they got progressively angrier, and then, they were turning and telling him to fuck off. AND then, as he continued, they started a fight. One of them jumped on his back while the other one started swinging punches at him. All this was happening right in front of me, and I couldn't believe it!! It was so bogan.

The fight only lasted about 10 seconds, if that, before, out of nowhere, a couple of bouncers jumped in and broke it up and took them away. I don't know how those bouncers move through the crowd so fast. It was quite amazing. Straight after that, they stopped playing again, and Dave wanted us to be silent, or he wasn't going to play the next song. I had a feeling he was going to play something very old, probably «Mechanix». Everyone else knew the same. Dave continued "Melbourne last night couldn't keep quiet. I want you to keep very quiet so you can hear what I'm gonna play. If someone next to you makes some noise, I want you to punch them in the head". I found this kinda offensive really, but also kinda funny considering the fight I'd witnessed just a minute before.

Anyway, he played the riff, and we all went wild. It was all very exciting and very Metal. I couldn't help but feel like those guys lost out, because it was «Mechanix», and it was followed up by «The Conjuring». Although by the end of that song the two guys in white were back: I guess maybe they convinced the bouncers that it was the other guy's fault.

Next Dave pulled out a twin-neck V and proceeded to play a very terrible slow acoustic song which I believe is called «Trust». He used this down time to introduce everyone to the band as well. I was quite surprised that it wasn't still Nick Menza on drums and Marty Friedman on guitar: their replacements looked pretty identical to me!

The show had been going for quite a while, but they still had some stuff in reserve, and the crowd knew it. They played «Symphony of Destruction», and then launched into «Peace Sells», which they stopped half way through to launch into a storming version of «Tornado of Souls», a really surprising choice. They then came back to «Peace Sells», and proceeded to have one of those rather cliché one-half-of-the-audience-versus-the-other-half-and-lets-see-who-can-be-the-loudest sing-a-longs. It was so Metal!!

Dave was really friendly and apologetic for not having been to New Zealand for such a long time [I think it's something like 10 years], and then they left the stage. But we knew they were coming back, because they hadn't played «Holy Wars» yet. They waited about five minutes before they came out and played it. And then it was over, in a shower of guitar picks into the audience. The house lights came on, and it was time to drag my sweaty carcass up the hill to my van, and go and pick up Rorn.

It was a great night out. They all spent a lot of time right down the front of the stage, playing their solos just a couple of feet away from the crowd, and played heaps of their old hits. But it still wasn't enough to ever convince me to see those anti-Napster bastards Metallica when they come.

Riots not Diets gig: The Liva Queens, Toxic Shock Syndrome, The Sound Laydee, The Carnys @ Necropolis, Auckland; Satuday 7 July

2001-07-10T16:03:00.001+12:00

Me and Rorn had decided to go on another holiday, probably all the way to Wellington. But we'd called it quits after only one night, and so we arrived back in Auckland about the middle of Thursday afternoon. Later that evening, we get a phone call from Sîan Sabotage and Sammy Vulture. They were in town to play a gig: just like a rumour I'd heard from my father a few weeks ago.

We didn't quite know what to do with them, but we soon fixed that. We picked them up from Necropolis, where they were staying and went to buy some beer. We were gonna go to k5k's, but then we decided to ring Funboy instead, and he suggested that we go and see him and Charles out in Panmure.

It was a plan, and we headed south on the motorway, soon coming to our destination. We were having trouble finding which number it was, and the girls needed to piss. So we just stopped the car, and Sammy pissed in someone's front yard behind a tree, and then we walked to the house. We weren't quite sure where to go, but then some homie coming down a driveway said "Are you looking for Charles?" and gave us directions.

We found ourselves in the little lounge of a little flat, with not enough seats, where Funboy, Charles, Charles' brother and some other homies were all chilling. We sat down. Funboy got the conversation rolling, as he always does, and he kept it going, as he always does. Marilyn Manson was playing on the stereo, and the rest of the boys sat along one wall, all silent. I got the feeling they were quite stoned.

I somehow managed to be allowed to put a CD on: I'd brought some with me. I chose Rebell Terract. I sat in my corner and listened to the music, tuning out the drunkeness. Eventually they heated up some knives and had some spots. I just sat. At about 23:30 we finally left. We dropped Funboy off at a notorious Panmure tinny house that has appearantly been going for years, and then headed back into the city to visit k5k.

This was the time that Rorn managed to break the sliding door on the van, meaning that it wouldn't open. We stayed at their house for a while. I couldn't take the cigerette smoke, and went and sat outside on the veranda.

We left soon enough, dropping them in the Grafton graveyard so that they could continue drinking. It was one or two in the morning before we were in bed, and we didn't get much sleep: for the second night in a row.

Friday passed uneventfully, but Rorn was sure that Sîan's prediction that everyone else was arriving from Wellington that evening would mean that at some stage my sister would arrive. I had an afternoon nap.

Sure enough, at about 20:00, up the path rolled Lenny, Kitty, Laura and Rubin. They'd seen Necropolis, seen the masses of drunken people wanting to stay there. And decided that here was a better option.

We sat in the lounge and listened to music: or rather they did as I set about fetching mattresses and covers for everyone so they'd be able to sleep in comfort. We somehow decided that we should get some beers: I'm not quite sure how, as it turned out that only Lenny and Rorn wanted to drink.

So I went to the supermarket with Kitty and Rubin, and we got 20 cans of Double Brown, and Rubin got us some chocolate. I got the beers back, and for some reason decided that I should have some. I'd been tired all day, I knew it was the last thing I needed. So I drank up quick. Raced the other two. Left them in the dust.

At about two in the morning, after about eight beers, and a whole lot of pot, I finally got to go to bed. I was too drunk to sleep properly. I woke up very early. I thought I heard voices out in the lounge where our visiters were sleeping. When I stumbled out there they weren't really awake. I spent the next hour or two in a daze.

Somehow it ended up that we had everyone in the van: Rorn, Funboy, Kitty, Laura, Rubin, Sammy, Sîan and Blair: all of them having to climb into the back over the front seat because of the broken door. It was really crazy. And we drove up Mount Eden. I'd never been to the top before, but it was quite a spectacular view. We ran to the bottom of the crater, and spelt out the word "Poo" in large letters out of stones. Then we climbed back to the top and admired our handiwork.

Eventually we dropped them all off at Necropolis, and ended up back home. And went to sleep.

At about 19:30 Lenny rang up, reminding us that we should be at the show at 21:00. I woke up again at about 20:45. Rorn still wasn't sure if we should go: she was still feeling really fucked, after three consecutive nights of not really sleeping. But eventually we're on our way, and we're there by 21:30.

The person on the door is asking for money. Lenny told me I could get in for free, and I tell her this. "Who's Lenny?" - "The one on the stage now, singing". The person is not sure what to make of this. I eventually give her $4, a third of the amount that would have covered me and Rorn, and walk in and start dancing, leaving Rorn trailing behind me wondering what's going on.

The Liva Queens are great, even better than when I saw them in Wellington. Except that the kick-peddle on the bass drum fucks up. And there's no fixing it, so they play on without it. When they've finished, Lenny spots me, and runs up and grabs me. She's really drunk, as she usually is when she plays. She's really happy that I'm there.

Rorn suggests that we go and get her some alcohol: the PA isn't too loud and she's warming to the idea of staying here. Toxic Shock Syndrome are getting on the stage and are preparing to play. As far as I know they've been disbanded for a year or two, but they've reformed for this gig. I never saw them then, and I missed them again as we headed out the door.

We walked the short distance to the nearest alcohol store, and got Rorn a couple of bottles of Canterbury Cream: a cheap Baileys rip-off. She decides that she hasn't brought enough pot with her if she going to be staying for the duration, so I drive her back home to get some more. We leave one of the bottles of alcohol at home, and head back to town.

I walk in the door to see all the punks jumping up and down to some strange Electro-Pop-Hip-Hop kind of music, that the girl on stage is MCing over. I surmise that this is The Sound Laydee. This leaves me in a state of confusion. It's not exactly Punk, but they're all digging it. I can't tell if I'm just jealous of her hardware and her thrall over these punks with non-punk music, or if it's really not that spectacular: I decide I am jealous, but that she's not that great. Still, all credit to her for breaking punks narrow vision.

She finishes. Me and Rorn go downstairs with Holly from Toxic Shock Syndrome and her new boyfriend, but I don't stay down there with them for long, because The Carnys are starting. I haven't managed to see these gals before either. I'm really excited. They are really tight, and they're great. [Yeah, I know, I'm giving my friends good write-ups. It stinks, doesn't it?] Sîan's screaming is great, and Kitty's drumming is amazing to watch: I mean, she's been drumming as long as I've know her, but I've never actually seen her doing it. Sammy's violin is a very interesting touch.

After a few songs Sammy stops playing violin and gets out into the crowd to dance. Everyone is dancing now. Lenny keeps falling over on the slippery floor, and everyone is helping her up. It's wild. The kick-peddle goes again, but Kitty soldiers on. And then it's over, and everyone starts to leave.

We hang around, not quite sure what to do now. There's another Punk gig at Tonic Bar, a couple of doors down from Necropolis. They've waited until the Necropolis gig finished before they start. So everyone floods down there.

Anna from Toxic Shock Syndrome, who lives at Necropolis, comes up and says that there are police down on the street, and so we should either stay up here or go down to Tonic: not keep swapping between them. Her and her flatmates are quite paranoid about getting raided, and are hoping that they'll avoid trouble now that their gig is over.

I go downstairs to look at the police, and see that they have a paddy-wagon double-parked in the street, and the officers are standing around near it, but are making no moves towards anyone. I'm thinking that perhaps they won't have any reason to cause any trouble. So I go back upstairs, and I'm just sitting around, wondering when and who I'm going to have to drive back to my place. I'm hoping that it won't be long until I'm in bed.

Suddenly Rorn and Lenny come upstairs, saying "Sam's been arrested". I can't believe this! I rush downstairs, and I can see the paddy-wagon is now outside Tonic bar, and there are cops all standing outside of it, and a crowd around the cops: someone with a video camera even: the crowd are looking angry. But the thing I notice most is that the paddy-wagon is shaking from side to side, like there's a real struggle going on inside. I watch it until it drives off, and the cops are all gone. I can't quite believe this.

I go back upstairs, and there everyone is angry, and they're making sure that Lenny doesn't go down there, because she's drunk enough to get arrested. Now I get to hear the story: the cops walked past Rorn and some other people who were sitting outside the bar with open bottles [illegal] and just ignored them, and, having decided on their easy target, grabbed a girl from behind. Sam had said "Hey, don't just fuckin' grab her like that," and the police had responded by saying "That's offensive language" and grabbed Sammy. When she'd realised that they were going to arrest her for saying "Fuck", she chose her usual tactics with the police and put up a nasty fight [she has a long and not-very-happy past of them arresting her in bad circumstances for trivial things, and really, really hates the police]: it eventually took five officers to wrestle her to the ground and handcuff her: and she's not a big girl.

People were of course pleading with the police to let Sammy go, but of course they have a quota to fill, and she was an easy arrest, or would have been if she hadn't fought them.

So we sat around up in Necropolis for a while, all trading stories about the pigs and venting our rage with our mouths. We were all very angry. It just doesn't seem right that these police have these powers to rather arbitrarily arrest people. Rorn summed it up best when she said "If you called me a rude name, and then I decided to beat you up with several of my mates, and then lock you in a small room for several hours, you'd think that I'd really over-reacted and was in fact quite psychotic".

A while later it looked like I should bring the van around to outside Necropolis from where it was parked around the other side of the block. But when I walked around the corner into St Benedicts Street, I suddenly see that there's a paddy-wagon down there, and the cops are massing around it, obviously being instructed for another raid. So I turn around and go back, and I tell the people that I won't be bringing the van around.

They send me on a mission for cigerettes, and I walk down Newton Road to the Shell, and by the time I come back there are now two paddy-wagons double-parked on the road, and the police are telling everyone that they have to move along, because the owner of Tonic doesn't have a license for people to be drinking in the street. It seems to me that they should be giving him grief rather than us. [I think in the end he got a $2000 fine for underage drinkers]

Sîan is standing on the street, and I go up to stand with her, because a police officer is starting to talk to her, and I don't want her arrested too. The police-woman is asking the usual questions: what's your name?, how old are you? She makes Sîan pull our ID to back this up, which I find a little odd: I usually find they're more than happy to take you at your word. The officer seems satisfied when Sîan says that she will be staying with me. We ask when we'll be able to collect Sammy from the police station. The officer says she doesn't know, that it'll probably be an hour or two. Sîan says something, just talking in her normal, kind of fast way. The police officer uses a very stern and serious voice, saying "Calm down Sîan! Just calm down". Sîan protests, quite rightly, that she is calm, but I'm getting worried because this officer seems to be a little aggitated and irrational: I think she is the one who needed to be calm. I decide to get Sîan upstairs before this officer does something rash.

I go downstairs a little bit later to find that the police have gone again. I see Holly, and ask her if they've arrested anyone else. She doesn't really know, she's been inside Tonic. It must be past two in the morning now, and someone finally tracks down Ross, to see if he can pick everyone up from our house instead of from Necropolis. It's all sorted. I bring the van around, and the people start to pile in, over the front seats in to the back, because the side-door is still broken: Kitty, Laura, Rubin, Blair, Lenny, Rorn, Lisa... Sîan is still out there, and some guy named Tyran: who says "I'll just come with you guys then", and Sîan says yes, and they're all in, and I'm wondering if that's really what I want.

We're on our way, but first we stop at the police station to find out when I can collect Sammy. I park a long way down the street to avoid trouble with the rowdy van. I run down to the police station, and walk in. There's no one at the desk, but there is a group of people there. They are all friends of the other girl who was arrested, Sheree. I introduce myself: "Do you know Lenny?" - "Yeah" - "I'm her brother". I tell them about how I want to get Sammy, but they've been told that she might not be released until the morning because she's only 16. With no police forthcoming, I leave my number with them, so that they can get Sammy to get in touch with me.

Then I run back to the van and drive the van-load of drunken punks back to my house. About one minute from the house Lenny starts vomiting on the bed we have in the back. It's all pretty crazy. I get them all inside the flat, and then go back down to get the mattress and all the other duvets and blankets and stuff we have in the van. Luckily we had a sheet on the bed when Lenny vomited on it, so the mattress is OK aside from a little wet patch.

I get all this stuff inside. The flat is full of people, playing music, and still drinking, because of the bottle of Canterbury Cream that Rorn had left back here earlier. I'm somehow not tired, somehow still running, even though I'm sober. After a while the phone rings, and I get it. It's a police officer, asking questions about how old I am and where I live and how I know Sammy. They eventually say they'll let her out into my custody after ringing her mother in Wellington to see that it's OK with her. This is a slight problem, because her mother doesn't know me, and has never even heard of me. So Sîan had the job of ringing Sam's mother at three in the morning and explaining everything. They talked for a long time, Sîan giving Sam's mother all the information that the police hadn't told her.

Eventually that was over, and people started going to bed: Lisa was first, and Lenny. We put them in our room, on a mattress on the floor. The police rang again: it must have been about four in the morning, and they said that I could go and get Sammy now. By this time the mattress on the floor and our bed were filling up with people, and it seemed that Rorn had secured us a single mattress on the floor in the kitchen. I wasn't too sure about this, but I understood that these people needed to sleep.

So I drive back into town, to the police station. I park outside, and walk in. There's no officer on the desk again. I wait maybe five minutes before one comes out. I tell him that I'm here to collect Sam. He looks at me kind of blankly and goes to find out what I'm talking about. He comes back, and asks me all those questions about how old I am and where I live again. Then he says that Sammy is very drunk, and that it's not safe to be in town in that kind of condition. Maybe because of the police!! I can't believe he's just said that. He tells me that she'll be about ten minutes.

I sit down. And wait. And wait. Presently three large Polynesians come in. Their friend has been arrested. They manage to get some attention. They're told it'll probably be an hour or so. They sit down and wait. We make a little small talk, but we don't have so much to say. I tell them they'll be pretty lucky if it's only an hour. It's Saturday night, and the quota means there's probably 40 people in the cells, at least, and they all have to be slowly processed. It must have been at least four hours since Sammy was arrested, and she still isn't out.

Eventually an officer comes back and says that Sammy will only be another 10 minutes: they just have to take her photo. I remember that they usually take your photo pretty soon after you get in: maybe they're just busy and are doing things in whatever sequence they can, or maybe they were waiting for the evidence of them beating her to wear off. Of course I didn't know if they'd beaten her at this point: it was just my mind working in paranoid overdrive.

A couple of blonde, white girls in typical tight clubbing clothing come in. One of them has had their brother arrested. They don't seem to have too many clues. They yell until an officer comes to give them attention. He can't tell them how long it will be until the guy is out. They ask how long we've been waiting, and we tell them. I ask them how long ago their brother was arrested, and they say it was about four hours, so I tell them that they might have some chance of him getting out in an hour or two, but that there are a lot of people in there that all need to be processed. I feel a little sorry for these very regular people: they don't quite have the same understanding.

Eventually they tell me that Sammy is ready to be released, and she comes out. She looks fairly dazed; her trousers are shredded. We walk to the van; she lights up a cigerette. She explains to me her version of events: basically they grabbed her, and then told her they were going to arrest her, so she started fighting as violently as possible, to try and hurt the police officers. The police officers of course punched and kicked her back. And once they got her in the van they pepper-sprayed her and started punching her, but of course she was drunk, and so it didn't hurt too badly, and she was fighting back the whole time. I guess that explains why the police van was shaking so much. And, funnily enough, they haven't charged her with offensive language like they said they were arresting her for, but have charged her with resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer and drunk and disorderly. I expected nothing less: they picked a fight with her and then charged her for it.

I get her back to my house at like five in the morning, and we sit for a while, the few of us that are still awake. Rorn wants to sleep, and lies down with the little dog. Sammy is kinda keen on sleeping too, so I pull out the couch for her, and then go and lie down with Rorn. It's uncomfortable, and I just lie there and let her hug me.

The lamp is still on, and the dawn is starting to come through the windows, and Blair and Tyran are sitting on the couch, drunkenly talking. I'm too polite to tell them to shut up, hoping that soon they'll work out that everyone is asleep. I'm really tired and burnt out, and they're bitching on about stuff... it really wasn't very pleasant.

They finally decide to sleep at about 07:00, and I get a little broken sleep, until it's about 08:30, when I have to start getting people up and ready for Ross to collect them at 09:00. The only person who manages to sleep through all this activity is Tyran, which kinda irks me.

Ross arrives on time, and Blair, Lenny, Lisa, Sîan and Kitty are gone, leaving me, Rorn, Sammy, Laura and Rubin sitting around in some kind of daze. Eventually Laura and Rubin decide that they're going to hitch to Rotorua to see their cousin, and so I drive them down the motorway to Mercer. It's a long trip, maybe an hour each way, but that's how far you have to go if you want to be able to hitch out of Auckland. The journey out is quiet. I drop them and turn around. It's midday.

I'm enjoying the drive back, just taking it easy. It's relaxing after the hectic night. As I get back over the Bombay Hills I decide to try the radio, and to my delight find the Zambesi Jazz show on bFM. It's a nice drive.

I get back about 13:00, and find that nothing much has changed. Tyran is awake. People are hungry. I make simple meal of pasta for everyone. Tyran is looking through all our records, and chooses to put on Bauhaus of all things. I sit with him for a while, but I haven't really got anything to say to him. Everyone is pretty much just staring in to space, too tired to do anything.

I go to check on Rorn, who is sitting in our room. It's about 15:00. When I get on the bed I find it so soft, so comfortable... Suddenly it is 18:00, dark... Everyone else has fallen asleep too, so I don't feel like I've neglected our guests.

We go out, and sit with them. I'm asking Tyran where he wants to go, offering to drive him to get him out of my hair. He hasn't done anything particularly offensive, but I just have this bad feeling about him, that maybe isn't even justified. But before I can get rid of him, Rorn needs dinner, and this means feeding him too, and so we spend pretty much the last of our money on fish'n'chips for everyone.

After dinner we sit around. Eventually it's about 21:00, and Rorn practically kicks us out, saying that I should take Sammy to k5k's house. So I take her and Tyran, and drop Tyran off somewhere down Dominion Road, and then head back up Dominion Road to k5k's house. It's really a long time before we go to do his radio show, and so we sit on the couch.

Sammy has been quiet all day, and nothing's really changed. We sit on the couch with k5k and play Tony Hawk's Skateboarding on the Playstation. Sammy doesn't spend her time playing Playstation, so she's not so good at it, but to her merit she doesn't get too frustrated. It helps that I can't figure out how to control it either. It's still a long time though, and we're a little bored. I feel sorry for Sammy that this is the best we have to offer her.

Funboy arrives as we start playing GTA London, which Sammy can't control at all (not surprisingly: it's got a pretty stupid control system in my opinion) and soon enough it's time to go. We hop in the van and drive to the university.

48 Sonic is cheerful as always, and today his pug dog Coco is running around. She jumps on Sammy a lot, and sprays her. It's pretty crazy. And then the Sonic is out, and it's time for the show. I'm really tired, but I soldier on. I'm feeling very sorry for Sammy though: I can't help but feel she doesn't really want to stay up this late just to sit on a couch and watch us DJ noise music. The phone rings and someone wants to listen to Jurassic 5, or something like that. I tell him to keep listening, and that we'll play it soon. It wasn't gonna happen.

The DJ following us is later than we expect, and as the clock rolls past 02:30, I'm really feeling burnt. Still, k5k knows the solution: "If you're feeling tired, play the music louder and faster". As a jazz record slinks around under k5k's broken beats and noise, the phone rings again! I'm very excited, because we hardly ever get phone calls, and now it's two in one night.

It's a guy with an English accent: "What are you doing? Oh please, make it stop! I've had the flu all week and you're giving me a headache!" - "Oh really? That's fantastic!" - "I mean, the jazz is great and all, but the noise... what are you doing? It's awful! Absolutely awful!" - "It's industrial-jazz. Do you really think it's awful?" - "Yes, it's awful. Please stop it. What are you doing? You're giving me a headache!"

At this point I decide to get all apologetic: "Oh, I'm so sorry. Boy, we'll stop it right away. Thank you for telling me the error of my ways. Oh boy, I'll never do it again". This guy isn't really listening to my sarcasm, he sounds kind of drunk and keeps talking to some other English sounding guy that's there with him. "What do you want us to play then? Do you want us to play some Spice Girls?" - "Oh, um, no, that would be better, but still awful. Do you have any Cliff Richard?" - "You want us to play some Cliff Richard?". Everyone is laughing at this, and k5k cues up a song that has a Spice Girls sample, which induces a groan from this guy.

I tell him that we'll look to see if we can find some. I'm getting bored of talking to him, so I hand him around. He seems to spend most of his time jabbering to the person he's with, not listening to anything we say. Occasionally he'll start singing "We're all going on a summer holiday..." Funboy ends up jabbering back to him in gibberish. I think we hung up on him in the end.

The next DJ arrives, and he's in the CD room picking out stuff he wants to play on his shift. I tell him that someone has rung up requesting Cliff Richard, and he says "Not on my fucking show. No fucking way". We get out of the station about 03:00, and then drop k5k off. I was thinking that Funboy would be coming back with us, but he'd made arrangements to stay at Sonny's, so I dropped him off there and headed home.

So, it's about 04:00 by the time I fall asleep. The alarm goes off at about 08:45, and I get up. It's Monday morning, time to take Sammy to court. I'm really tired, and I think Sammy is even more tired. Somehow we manage to get there on time, and find a carpark right by the court building. The meter is $3 for one hour, which is a lot of the money I have left. I'm not hopeful that we'll be out of there in an hour, but it might happen, depending on how easy it is to get it transferred to Wellington.

We find the Youth Court, and take the elevator up there. It's 09:30, just like it says on the summons the police gave Sammy. The lights are out and nobody's there. I can't quite believe this. When I'm this tired this seems like some kind of crazy dream. We catch the lift back down to the ground floor. It stops at the floor below the Youth Court, and a whole bunch of well-dressed, white, 30- or 40-something middle-class looking people get on. When I get to the bottom I look at the floor directory. It seems that these people have come from the Jury assembly area. It doesn't surprise me.

We walk back down to the other end of the building, and check the lists of when everyone is appearing. Sammy's name isn't even on it. I go to the information desk, and after waiting about twenty minutes, we get served, and the guy tells us that Sammy is scheduled for 11:30. I can't fucking believe this. They could have told us that we didn't have to get up so early.

We go back down to the Youth Court, and there's still no one there. A lawyer turns up, and seems as surprised as we were that no one is there. I suddenly think that maybe the guy at the information desk can get it transferred to Wellington for Sammy, and seeing as nothing is happening here, we go back down to ask the guy. We wait another 20 minutes or so to get served, but he can't help us with that. It was a long shot anyway.

When we go back this time there's a little more action. We sit for a while, wondering whether she'll be able to get a transfer without having to plead guilty first, as is standard practise. But the parking-meter has almost run out. I ask Sammy if she thinks that she'll be OK while I go and move the van somewhere else. I'm feeling bad about not being able to support her through this. She consents, and I go back to the van, and drive it down to Victoria Park Markets, where there is parking. Here it is only about $2 an hour, and so I'm able to buy about 90 minutes with my remaining money. This is gonna give me through to about 12:15. I'm hoping that we can be out of here in time.

I run back to the court buildings, uphill all the way, and when I get there this time I find it full of people. All of them look quite poor, most of them are Maori or Pacific Islanders. Sammy is nowhere to be seen, so I figure she's in one of the little rooms talking to the lawyers that are on duty. I see the one she's in and walk in to see what's up, but the lawyer yells at me to get out, and so I go and sit down.

In a little while Sammy comes out. She's just been discussing with the lawyer the bit of paper they give you that has the police's version of events on it. Sammy's saying "I can't believe this! It says I spat on the police, but really they'd given me a glass of water after they'd pepper-sprayed me, and I spat it out onto my face because my face was all burning from the pepper-spray. Fuckin' cunts."

Now there was nothing to do but wait until they called her into the court room in front of the judge. We waited and waited as they called in one person after another. Down the other end of the waiting room was a large Island family, with all their small children in tow. The children wanted to run around and have fun, but the adults would scoop them up and whack them and tell them to be quiet and sit still. You can tell that this violence in public is just a taste of what it's like at home for these children. Child abuse is a big issue here at the moment, and me and Sammy sit mutely, unsure at how to communicate to these people that they are wrong. Silence is complicity, and I'm tired, and angry already from being here having my time wasted by the judicial system. It's not going well today.

A homie girl who called a Sammy a freak goes downstairs for a cigerette and misses her name being called. We laugh. Finally it's Sammy's turn. She goes in, and comes out about five or ten minutes later. She's laughing. She managed to get a transfer down to Wellington without having to enter a plea. But her bail notice says that she isn't to drink any alcohol: it's like she said to the judge: how do you stop an alcoholic from drinking?

Now the court clerk takes her to the information desk down the other end of the building, and tells her they'll have the necessary forms for her in about ten minutes. So it's time for more sitting and waiting. But we're almost out, so I again ask Sammy if it's OK if I go get the van and bring it back here: I figure the timing should be nice. She consents, and so I run back down the hill to Victoria Park Markets again.

I drive the van to the courthouse, and slowly drive past, expecting to see her sitting outside by now. But she isn't. Luckily, just around the corner I manage to find a ten minute parking zone, which I'm hoping will suit my needs. I rush into the building, and find that Sammy is still sitting there, waiting. I sit down by her. We're tired. Presently they come, and make her sign her bail form, saying that she won't drink.

We go out to the van, and drive home. We're tired. We sit around all afternoon. In the evening we go to the supermarket and buy a six-pack of beers for Rorn and Sammy to drink. I think we were in bed by midnight.

At 05:30 the alarm goes off, and I go into the lounge and wake Sammy up. It's quite cold and still dark. I drive her into town and drop her off at the Grafton on-ramp, where she should easily be able to get a ride down the motorway. And then I go back home and go back to sleep. It's all finally over...

SCHOOL OF MEAT "ENROL TODAY" RELEASE PARTY: the liva queens, tried for treason, school of meat @ underground arts, wellington; 28 april

2001-04-29T15:53:00.000+12:00

Lenny's band is playing, and before hand they are having their traditional soup club, which they have every couple of weeks at a different person's house each time. Rorn isn't up to it. She's quite shattered. But I really want to go. So I spend the afternoon reassuring her and setting up the van with curtains on the windows and stuff so that she feels secure.

And then I head to soup club. There is soup, and it's delicious. A whole bunch of people are there, some I don't even know. We are all excited about the show. We decide that it will be a great idea to use a marker pen to give me a big tattoo on my back, in the style of all the straight edge kids up in Auckland. We chose the slogan "Hardcore is my God", and three Xs, with flames around them. Lenny does a great job, because she's seen the tattoos on one of her journeys to Auckland. She uses steelwool to correct the mistakes she makes: perfectionist, but luckily it doesn't hurt.

I look in the mirror at the "tattoo" and it makes me feel so tough. I can see why all these angry young men get these tattoos. I run into the lounge to show everyone. Anna and some other girls I don't know have a look of horror on their faces as I peel off my shirt to reveal a hairy chest. They're still not impressed as I show them the back.

It seems like several hours later that we all get on a bus and head to town. There's about 20 of us, all looking punk as. We sit down the back. There are teenage Metalheads down there. We laugh at and with them, as they smoke cigerettes on the bus. Girls kiss each other and claim to be lesbians, which drives the teenage boys wild.

We get off the bus and walk up Cuba Street to Underground Arts. It's now in a large warehouse off Abel Smith Street. I remember seeing the warehouse available for lease and wishing I could have got it: it seems they had the same idea, and the tattoo studio to pay for it. As we're at the corner of Cuba and Abel Smith we pass some large rednecks who've just come out of the Southern Cross Tavern. One of them says "Hey sexy, do you want a fuck?" I'm not sure if he was talking to the glue-sniffing prostitutes across the road or to Ramelia, but Ramelia is sure it's her. I quickly yell out "Yes!" This makes all this guys mates laugh at him, and his comeback is "I wasn't talking to you, you queer". I was hoping for a fight, but still, it was pretty funny.

I pay $7 at the door to get a free School of Meat CD: it was gonna be $5 anyway, so it's worth it, and when I see it's in a purple case and has a picture of a cow on it, I know Rorn won't be mad at my extravagance. We sit in Underground Arts for a while, quite a while really. I think it must be at least an hour. My friend Kieran arrives. I haven't seen him in ages, so I have a yarn to him. And then my sister is on stage, with her flatmate Lisa (also in The Carnys) and flatmate Blair (of the defunct Deaf Terrorists). It's The Liva Queens. It's their first gig besides playing at the party the night before, but they're really tight. The bass guitar is feeding back, screaming between every song; my sister is yelling: it's amazing to me that her voice suits this so well. It all sounds fantastic, really groovey simple Punk, and we're all having a boogie.

Next up is Tried For Treason. There is more of a crowd now; people are dancing. Mainly just this large guy in a Snapcase singlet. So I go and dance with him. I've started to realise that unlike Auckland, there are not going to be lots of sweaty tattooed males whipping their shirts off and rubbing up against each other in a homoerotic Punk Rock ritual dance. It's up to me. Sam is filming us with a video camera, and Snapcase is a little drunk and really going for it, and we're amused. And so I rip off my shirt, revealing my great tattoos, and I'm moshing beside him, waving my fist in the air as he is, and we're all just having so much fun, and the music is really Metal: Metalcore, with a ripped-off Metallica intro for one of their songs. It was fantastic.

When they finish Snapcase is talking to me. He reads my back: "Hardcore is my God? What do you mean by that? Are you from West Auckland?" This is great! Straight away he's got it. But I say "No, I'm from West Hamilton. Hamilton Hardcore represent!!!" It was great. His girlfriend comes up to me, and she grabs my chest, and she's saying "Oh wow! Your breasts are bigger than mine! Oh wow! It's great that you've got your shirt off!" and she's fondling me, and then she says "Can I bite your nipple?" I'm finding this all a little crazy, certainly amusing, and so I consent. She bites hard, and it's all I can do not to make a sound. When she finally finishes, she's left a bite-mark, and it hurts. But she's thanking me, and I thank her.

I walk over to my sister, and she's grinning. "Hey, I saw that girl grabbing your breasts eh?" I tell her how she even bit me. Lenny's laughing. "Look at you, standing around with your shirt off! Who would have thought?" The girl comes over to the two of us and grabs onto both of us, pulls us close. "Do you want to hear some poetry?" We agree, and she recites to us some wonderful sounding poetry, quite a feat I feel, because she was a bit drunk. Lenny really likes it, and so do I. Lenny tells her a special saying: "Blair Jones, Blair Jones, say it twice for good luck". It's a fantastic saying, I couldn't get it out of my head for weeks.

I go outside for a while, but then head back in as School of Meat go onstage. There's quite a large crowd by now, but I manage to make my way down the front, and take my shirt off again. I'm dancing like mad, screaming "Hardcore!" and "Straightedge!" in the gaps, and making an X above my head with my arms. It's fantastic! School of Meat are Grind/Hardcore, and it's great, although I find it's almost harder to dance to than slower, more groovey stuff. Maybe I'm just getting tired.

When it's over I go to their kitchen to try to get a drink of water. They're large skinheads, and they have a fridge full of beer. They ask me if I want a drink, and I say I'd like some water. They tell me to help myself from the tap, but if their leather jackets go missing they'll fucking kill me. I don't want their leather or their wrath, so I leave their jackets on the bench and go outside. Everyone is sitting on the sidewalk drinking, and so I don't even go back inside for the last band. Kieran is offering me his alcohol, but I'm not interested. I don't bother to go back inside for the last band. I'm just waiting for it to be time to catch the bus back home. I amuse myself by trying to ride Little Dan's skateboard. It's been years since I've been on one. I can see why. It's pretty crazy.

Eventually I manage to find the time, and it's time to go, so I catch the 01:00 bus back to Island Bay. Right to the end. Rorn is there, nice and safe in the van. We try to get some sleep.

Daemon @ The Southern Cross Tavern, Wellington; 27 April

2001-04-29T15:46:00.001+12:00

There's a party going on at Ross' house in Newtown, a place our friend Karma used to live. I load everyone into the van and drive them all to Newtown. It's still reasonably early. Rorn wants some alcohol, so I walk to the bottle store. I decide just to go to the supermarket instead because it's closer. So I'm walking down the road, and then I see this poster, and it says that Daemon are playing in town tonight. These guys are old friends of mine, and I'm really excited at this amazing coincidence!

I get Rorn a bottle of wine and then head back to the party, and tell Rorn. She's not so excited, but my sister is insisting that I go, and so I do. My sister walks me down to the bus stop, and I get on a bus and head to town. It doesn't go quite where I'm hoping it will go, so I jump off at the Basin Reserve and walk the rest of the way. I've somehow consumed an energy drink, and the caffiene is starting to rip into me: I'm really not supposed to have that evil shit. I stop at a petrol station and use their toilets: they don't know how much they've saved my night.

I get to the bar, The Southern Cross Tavern, on Abel Smith Street. It's going to be in the front bar: a new little one called The Cross Bar. I look in the windows, and nothing seems to be happening. I talk to a guy at the door: he doesn't know where the band are. I'm trying to get in free, but in the end I give the guy $2, and he's stoked, because every little bit helps, and there's no way they're making profit off this gig. The stamp is a pattern of leaves, and the guy is looking at it and wondering what it is. I tell him it's leaves, and confuse him by saying "It's like autumn on my arm". I leave, look through all the other bars, scoping the Friday night crowd for Metalheads. No luck.

The guy at the door has told me that it doesn't start until 23:00. It's only about 21:30. I walk down Cuba Street. I get to Cuba Mall. It's full of people, as I expect. Swirling like a flashback. Nothing's changed since the days me and my brother used to hang out here: goths, drunks, and lots of assorted random people all loud, colourful, active...

I get to a bus stop, and check out the timetable. I was hoping that there would be a late bus, because I remembered that there used to be late buses on Friday and Saturday nights. But the bus timetable says "Late buses: 1am, 2am, 3am: Saturday & Sunday nights". So I'm thinking that the latest bus I can get is 23:50. If the show starts on time, I'll get to see most of it, so I'm not too worried.

As I'm walking back up Cuba Mall, wearing my pink hoody of course, a guy comes up and starts talking to me in a European accent: "Hey, how's it going?" - "Alright" - "What are you up to tonight?" - "Um, I'm just going to see a band. What are you up to?" - "I'm just looking for some friends". I start to get the feeling that this guy is trying to pick me up. "Where are you from?" - "I'm Dutch, but I live here in Miramar" - "OK, that's great". I don't really have anything to say to this guy, and he soon gives up on me.

I get back to the venue, and Dead BC sees me through the window; points and says loud enough for me to hear him "Look, it's Slow!" I get inside and they're all really excited to see me. It's been over a year. I explain the amazing coincidence that has led me to be here tonight. "That's a nice hoody you have on. Is it red?" - "No, you can't tell in this light, but it's hot pink actually".

I talk to band leader, the singer/guitarist Xanataph about stuff. It seems they have a new EP out, that they've somehow managed to score a video grant. That things in Nelson have mellowed out, that they've all mellowed out. Xanataph tells me how he's been meditating, how he's been feeling more energy, that he's realised that it's better to put out positive energy if you want to get it back. This is quite amazing coming from a Satanic Black Metaller. I have also been finding new energies lately, and I'm amazed again at the coincidence. I'm getting an energy from just having this conversation with him. Really buzzing.

It must be about 23:30 when they finally start to play. Someone is going around with a hat trying to get the old drunks [this is a down-market bar filled with slot-machines and old drunks] to make a donation to see Daemon. This leads to complaining and heckling. I get to hear the first song, and then they start to play a new song off the EP, the one they've got a video grant for. It's sounding great. But then I notice that my friend Brunka has arrived. She is over the other side of the room. I'm only 99% sure it's her, so I'm staring at her. She gets up and leaves. I'm now sure it's her. I get up and follow her out. "Brunka! Brunka!" She turns around, and it takes her a while to recognise me. She's excited to see me and gives me a hug.

She's going down Cuba Street to check out another gig at Indigo. I walk down with her. I have to go anyway. I get there. Tell her that we're gonna be living down here, so I'll call her sometime. And that's the end of that. I get to the bus stop, it turns up, and I'm on my way back to Newtown, wondering how the party has turned out.

The next day I realise that the buses did go on Friday and Saturday nights: it's just that technically that is Saturday and Sunday morning. I can't believe my stupidity at missing Daemon because I couldn't read a bus timetable properly, but it was probably all for the best, because everyone was counting on me to get home from the party.

k5k, DJ D>Form @ k5k's house

2001-04-15T15:41:00.000+12:00

On Saturday 14th there is a party at k5k's. It is the going away party for MC slypussy. We arrive there at about 20:30. No one is there except for k5k and Honor. We sit with them in the lounge. About 21:30 one of MC slypussy's little sister's arrives with some friends of hers and some bottles of wine. They leave again, unimpressed with what they see.

People finally arrive about 22:00: Prose and his girlfriend; Unique; DJ D>FORM: all the kids from out west. DJ D>FORM sets up his turntables on the bench in the kitchen. Unique is talking about how he has a meeting with Sony in a few weeks: he's talking like he's about to blow up. He's wearing very expensive clothes and gold jewellery. He talks about buds, says he only smokes "gold pearl" or something. We've never met anyone who makes such claims. In this country buds are buds, and they're all top quality.

DJ D>FORM starts playing. He's a Hip-Hop DJ. It's kind of loud. He plays «CREAM» by Wu-Tang; the rest I didn't recognise. MC slypussy turns up with Herr Denton: they've been out on a mission. Now they're both E'd up. Most of the people end up outside on the veranda. I stay in the lounge, watching Prose and Unique clowning around with their DJ buddy; watching the bored look on Prose's girlfriend's face.

Herr Denton comes in and talks to me. k5k starts playing his set. Prose's girlfriend looks madly unimpressed. It's enough to make everyone go outside. It's loud and noisey. Rorn gets me to get them to turn it down a bit. People are floating around. We talk to Herr Denton a lot. We decide to leave. It's only midnight. But she's too tired. MC slypussy and Herr Denton find out that we're leaving and try to beg us to stay: they like our company. But it can't happen, and we head home, leaving everyone else to party while we sleep.

salmonella dub @ Myers Park, Auckland

2001-01-20T15:39:00.001+13:00

It was a Sunday, and we cruised off to pick up Rorn's cousin Dymo before heading midtown. People were flooding towards Myers Park, but we somehow luckily found a park at the YMCA, and walked down to Myers Park. It was a lovely sunny day, and the park was packed. There must have been somewhere around 10,000 people there, at least. We managed to find a seat under a tree next to the hot-dog stand about 100 metres back from the stage.

But we soon got sick of it, as sitting on a slope took more effort than we thought, and moved around some. As we moved through the crowd, Dymo kept meeting people who recognised him but he couldn't remember for the life of him who they were or where he'd met them.

We eventually ended up even further away from the stage, after stopping to have a chat with the one person Rorn knew there: Anna, from the now defunct all-girl Hardcore band Toxic Shock Syndrome and the punk venue Necropolis.

Presently Salmonella Dub took the stage. From where we were sitting, pretty much all you could hear was reverberated bass, but I believe they played their hit «Johnny» as the first or second song. It was all going pretty mellow.

Then Dymo saw across the crowd an old acquaintance of his and Rorn's, a guy named Jolyon [he's a DJ who also puts out a fortnightly Dance magazine]. Dymo went and talked to him. We sat listening to the music, but then suddenly Dymo disappeared with Jolyon. This left us with a dilemma, as Rorn decided that Salmonella Dub weren't her cup of tea, and that she'd rather go home and have a large feed (those damned munchies, eh?).

So we waited about ten minutes, and he still wasn't back. So we decided that he'd be able to make it home without us, and took off at a rapid speed. I can't remember if it was a nice feed or not, but I'm sure we probably made the right decision.

Kog Transmissions, DJ Amanda @ Beresford Square, Auckland

2000-12-03T15:26:00.005+13:00

This was the first in this summer's series of Dancing in the Streets, as part of the Auckland City Council's Music in Parks scheme to distract the public from whatever evil they're up to by providing free music to the people. It started at about 19:00, which was about the time I hit the road on the start of my mission.

First a little blast up the North-Western Motorway to pick up MC slypussy of Anti-Kati. As he opened the door we noticed a piece of paper on the ground. It was addressed to one of his teenage sisters, and so of course we opened it. It was from some guy who was giving her the address of some party the next night. We were a little disappointed that it was something so uninteresting, but then again, his sisters are pretty straight. I then went upstairs and delighted his mother with my startling body, which I was showing off with a very tight, very cropped, red mesh top: essential clothing for the evening of mindless House music we had planned.

Finally the MC was ready, and we climbed into the car and headed downtown. It being Friday night, and downtown being what it is, we ended up parking over some driveway outside the plush apartment that k5k (the other half of Anti-Kati) stays at due to his going out with a model. We went upstairs and I spent the whole time looking out the window to see if my car was going to get towed. A police car went down the alley, but then it disappeared out the other end. But then a few minutes later they were back on foot, and so I went to move my car. I turned out of course that my paranoia was unjustified, but I think it hurried the destructive duo out of the house and into the car.

We then took off to Albert Park, where we had a little smoke, and then we parted ways as K5K took off to go to some exclusive fashion-show that his girlfriend was in, on the 36th floor of Metropolis, one of the city's fanciest hotels. When we were outside the building MC slypussy saw Caroline Ryan from TV3 news, who he thinks is sexy, which was quite amazing when you consider how much celebrities hide in this small country.

We rang up our friend Edward Denton and told him we were waiting for him if he wanted to come into town to dance with us, and then ended up walking up Queen Street to get Beresford Square. We went through Myers Park.

Herr Denton had managed to beat us there, and we found him easily, even though the little square was packed with people. I guess it was because he was the only one wearing a large black DHR hoody. We took him down a back-alley by the fire station, and were about to hand him the goods when the sounds of radio-voices erupted from around the corner. We thought perhaps it was the police, but of course it was just the fire station. And then someone said "Are you alright there?". We told him we were, and the large, good-looking blond guy asked us what we were doing tonight. We told him we were just going to the rave. Then the MC had a stroke of genius: "Are you a fireman?". It turned out that the guy who looked the stereotype of a fireman was indeed a fireman. "So how is that then?". He left us alone after that, and soon we headed to the dancefloor.

We arrived for the end of DJ Amanda's set. Then some guy got up on stage and thanked us all for being there, and thanked the Council for sponsoring it, which brought cheers, and thanked bFM for sponsoring it, which brought cheers. And then he thanked Starbucks for sponsoring it (they had a large presence there) , which led to one of those cheers which faded away as quickly as it started, as people realised they weren't supposed to be cheering at all.

And then Kog Transmissions took the stage. The DJ was a thin, tall guy with glasses and a ponytail dressed in very plain clothes. It's funny that the guy behind NZ's biggest electronic music success story probably wouldn't be "cool" enough to hang out with these elitist House fans (although maybe I'm being too hard on these well-dressed, well-groomed young Aucklanders: maybe they're not that shallow).

We moved down to the left hand front of the stage, and started dancing. Some people came out on stilts to entertain the crowd. They were silver and very tall. The music was OK, but not really pumping. We moved around behind the stage (a truck), and almost immediately a security guard told us to scram, like we were some kind of trouble-makers who were loitering and looking to make trouble. I looked around and there was nothing to steal and no equipment we could interfere with. It was puzzling. So we moved back to the front of the stage.

This time we were on the right hand side, a little bit back from the stage. We pushed our way into the heaving mass, and ended up by the people who seemed to be having the best time. That is to say, the people who went "Wooooooooooo!!!!" the loudest every time the beat cut away for an "atmospheric" bit of the music (which was often). MC slypussy used these quiet parts to yell "Brains!" I think it may have confused a few people. A song came on with cheesey samples, something like "This is security. We have a breach in sector six", and I almost made the MC fall over laughing by yelling "He's got a gun!". No one else around us seemed particularly worried about this, but I think that's because everyone was "in their own little world".

The music was uninspiring, and we were thirsty, so we went looking for some water. There was a dairy open on K' Road with water. MC slypussy treated us to it and then we headed back.

We ended up back down the left hand front of the stage. Kog's set was coming to an end, and it was quite pumping. Some people came out on stilts with flaming fingers and danced around with some people with fire-pois. It's amazing no one was hurt as they barged out and started waving fire around - the crowd down the front had to all step back smartly, which of course left me in a crush.

I took this opportunity to go and talk with Herr Denton and MC slypussy, who had retreated off the dancefloor and were watching the proceedings with interest. It was at this juncture that the MC pointed out to me a young man who was taking photos of the DJ and of the people playing with fire and the crowd and so on. I recognised him as the young man who was taking photos of the World Trade Bank protest I had been at. MC slypussy told me that this young man was actually an old acquaintance of ours named Rhys. I was surprised by this because I did not know that Rhys was a photographer: in fact I thought he was a dry-cleaner, but it was indeed him. I found it very amusing that we would suddenly cross paths again in this way, because the only contact we've had with him for the last few years is sending anonymous humourous text-messages to his cellphone from the internet.

I chuckled for a while as we remembered stories about Rhys, and then the fire-dancers looked like they were going to finally stop, and I headed back to the edge of the circle around them. They left, and the crowd raced into the space that this created. I stood my ground, and the music flowed on, really pumping now as there was only about 15 minutes left, and suddenly I realise that a girl dancing just in front of me has taken her top off and is waving her breasts about madly. It takes me a few seconds to get my head around this, and then I hear behind me a male voice saying "What a slut". I turn to look at the person who would make such a ridiculous comment, and my head spins as I realise that all of a sudden I have been surrounded by a crowd of large, drooling males; all eyes on the topless girl.

The music stopped, and the announcer was back on the stage to thank everyone again. Kog got a big cheer, as did bFM and the council. When he mentioned Starbucks there was an absence of applause, and so I yelled out "Yay!! Starbucks!!", causing confused looks from the people around me. And that was the end of that.

We headed off through Myers Park, not knowing what to do next. The tabs were not up to much, and so we took Herr Denton to where he was parked and then me and MC slypussy took off towards my home. On the way we decided to stop at supermarket and buy a whole bunch of mixed lollies, and then we continued on our journey.

But when we got there, Rorn was asleep, so we decided to continue on to Western Springs, where we played on the playground. There was a strange guy there who I think was either drunk or a little crazy. He came riding up on a bicycle and looked at the toilets, then he rode away again. He was back again five minutes later, and we talked to him for a while. He offered to push us on this crazy swing-type thing, but we declined. As we swung on the regular swings and ate the candy, we rapidly became sick from to many soft jubes.

We decided to head back to MC slypussy's house, and that's how I found myself at three in the morning, listening to Atari Teenage Riot; a sudden realisation that I'd been talking shit to the MC for quite a while and wondering if he wanted to sleep with me. I decided to head back home to bed.

The next morning I sent Rhys another anonymous text message, reading "I saw you taking photos of that topless chick at the rave last night". It's stupid, I know, but it makes me laugh.

"DRUM'N'NOISE VOL.1" RELEASE PARTY: hakaider, audioslut @ lost angel café, auckland

2000-11-22T15:13:00.003+13:00

I rolled up to the Lost Angel Café at about 22:30, with K5K and MC slypussy of Anti-Kati, and K5K's model girlfriend Honor. We were already well-primed for action, as we'd just been at a Mt Eden mansion that K5K was house-sitting listening to the NWA remixes on the «Attitude» compilation. The Lost Angel lies in Auckland's seedy K' Road red-light district, and is a small black café with black furniture and on this night (and I think most nights) it was filled with people dressed in black. I was wearing orange.

It was a CD-release party: a split CD and 10" «Drum n Noise Vol 1» on their own label Headwound Recordings. Even though we'd cruised in an hour or two after the scheduled start time, we arrived in time for the sound-check. And then the first DJ, who I think was named Dan or Dave or something. He was playing a set of noisy Drum n Bass.

Next up was Audioslut, who played an even noisier set of Drum n Bass. Then it was Dan again, and the A/K crew decided that they should head somewhere they could get a drink. So we cruised down to Verona, another café at the more mainstream end of K' Road. A few beers later we headed back down to the Lost Angel. Audioslut was playing again, and it was noisier still. I realised that the opportunity to dance had passed: it wasn't the dancefloor tech-step style of Drum n Bass, but instead a nasty beast in a café that really didn't have the atmosphere for dancing.

Finally, when I was almost nodding off to sleep in the comfortable couch down the front (top marks to the Lost Angel for it's seating arrangements), Hakaider stepped up behind the decks. This guy generated some dense noise, and it was getting interesting besides the fact it was making my head hurt, when suddenly, five minutes into his set, Honor decided that she needed to go home. We had no choice but to go along with her.

As we walked down the back streets to where we had parked the car, an old, fat, Polynesian prostitute flashed us her large, sagging breasts. I'd been starting to think that the $5 cover charge hadn't been worth it for the enjoyment I'd managed to get out of my night, but the look on Honor's face when we got flashed really made my night.

Fringe Macabre @ The Athenæum, Dunedin

2000-10-13T23:09:00.001+13:00

We arrived in Dunedin to find that not only was it the tail end of the Fringe Festival, but it was also Friday the 13th. It's funny how these things sneak up on you when you're unemployed and time and dates have no meaning as you waste your life away.

Anyway, we hooked up with our friends and they were all going to this thing called Fringe Macabre. As things happen, at the time it was supposed to start we were only just stumbling out the door and down the hill to town. When we got there we found out that it was going to cost $5, which was more than we had predicted. We grudgingly paid the man and went in.

The Athenæum is a small theatre, and it was reasonably full. As we went in, loud crazy horror movie scenes were being projected on to the screen, and so we were actually a little relieved when our friend Nathan who'd been helping with the Fringe Festival led us into a back room. Here we stood around blinking at the bright light, drinking alcohol and admiring our friend J's new baby, which was dressed as an elf for the evening.

The loudness from outside stopped, and we wondered back in and found seats. There was a guy on stage wearing nothing but pin-stripe trousers and a pillow-case over his head, disguising his identity. He was holding an animal horn which had a stick of incense burning in it, and he was moving in slow motion to some really eerie cello music.

He placed the horn on the floor, and then lay down on the floor himself. He started spasming to the music, and as the tempo increased he had his hand down his pants, and it became quite clear to everyone that this guy was masturbating on stage, prompting several people to walk out.

When he'd finally come in his pants, he lay there for a while, still convulsing to the music: and then suddenly, he whipped the pillowcase off and spat fake blood everywhere. We could now see that this junkie-thin guy who'd been wanking in front of us was in his late 20s and balding. It wasn't pretty. He went on to spend about another ten minutes stumbling around like a zombie and groaning. He even fell off the stage a couple of times to amuse the audience. A lot of people clapped when he finally finished his performance: I reserved my applause as I couldn't work out if it was a performance, or just some crazy guy getting his jollies by wanking in front of an audience.

Next up was Kim, who is a good acquaintance of ours. Straight away a few more people left, one girl saying "I hate this guy. He gives me the creeps". He was pretty drunk, and related to us how he had lost his love [I think she was in the audience, unless he was just acting]. He wanted her back. He identified himself with characters from Greek legends that he was too drunk to pronounce the names of. Eventually he climbed off the stage and started wading across the chairs, dramatically calling after his lost love. But the chairs were the sort where the seat folds up when no one's sitting on it, and he ended up with his leg stuck in a seat, too drunk to get out, and with everyone laughing. To know him the act was pretty funny, but I imagine people who didn't know him found it to be the rantings of some drunk wanker.

The next act looked to me like it was going to hold a lot of promise. This really oddly dressed guy came up with a bass guitar, and the pony-tailed guy who'd been MCing the night came out with a keyboard and a drum machine. I hoped they were going to make some amazing noise like the Auckland gods Anti-Kati. How wrong I was. The bass player started, and it wasn't distorted. And I don't know what happened with the keyboards and drum machine, but they alternated between being really low in the mix and not being there at all. Which essentially made it a long wanky bass solo. By the time they'd been at it for five minutes the theatre had pretty much cleared out. After ten minutes there were only about five people left. The sound actually came together for about 30 seconds, but it still sounded like somthing that... well, you know, the people making the music obviously dug it, so it was all cool.

I walked out too, and thus ended my experience with the most wanking you'd ever get to watch for $5.

global day of action, auckland style

2000-09-28T15:00:00.002+12:00

September 26th 2000 was another day in a string of global solidarity protests. This time we were in league with the protesters at the World Bank meeting in Prague [Czech Republic]. As you can understand, we are all very angry at the World Bank (and all banks) for their actions in creating 3rd world poverty.

So I rolled up to the designated meeting place for the protest, slightly sceptical because it was at the Auckland University (or government brain-washing facility). I expected to be greeted with droves of dirty punks and the like, but instead there was no one. As I wondered if I was early, a small group of about 20 people cruised up. It seemed from their placards that these people were university students from the communist group - you could tell because of the large advertising for their Socialist Worker newspaper that was on every placard. I was even more sceptical, but hey, I was here to protest, not to judge these people.

They got up with their megaphone and tried to goad the indifferent students who were sitting in the quad eating their lunch to come on the protest. It's amazing the ability of these "normal" people in their trendy expensive clothes to not only ignore protest cries, but to ignore them in such a way that it seems that like it's not even happening. I was sitting there watching the proceedings, and it was like the communists existed in a vacuum.

Eventually Willy turned up to represent the punks with an anarchist flag, and then it was time to march. I was a little surprised to see the police following us right from the start. There were only a few of us, and the chants that we hadn't rehearsed were a little weak sounding as everyone got to grips with the words:

* Seattle, London, Prague, Melbourne - Babylon it's time to burn!
* World Bank come off it - the enemy is profit!
* World Bank, what a lie - you don't care if children die!
* Multi-national corporations - genocide in the starving nations!
* The peoples' persistance - will globalise resistance!

We walked from the quad down to Wellesly Street, staying on the footpath until we got to Queen Street, where there were quite a few more police cars. Here we took to the road, disrupting the traffic. I think that the communists must have got permission for the protest, because the police cars made way for us, and the officers walked with us and directed the traffic.

Since we were on Queen Street, there were lots of people about, and our chants gained volume - although at times they broke down as the communists with the megaphone couldn't quite decide which one to start with next. As I looked at all the vacant faces staring at us as we walked down the middle of the street, I felt energised in a way I haven't since I danced in the streets of Wellington. There is something about being the "odd one out" that gives you a feeling of power.

Of course no one knew what we were on about, and it wasn't so obvious, but somehow our numbers swelled to maybe 50 people. We walked to Albert Street, where Tradenz have their offices. Tradenz is a government agency which deals with the World Bank and advertises New Zealand overseas as a great place to get cheap labour and stuff like that. The communists leading us knew the number of the building, but we ended up walking up and down the street a couple of times before they worked out which building it was. It seemed that it was in the ANZ Bank tower.

So we gathered there, and the communists gave some speaches about what we were protesting about, and a girl named Victoria who'd been an organiser for the S11 protests against the World Economic Forum in Melbourne spoke about how important it is that we get out and show them that we are against their capitalist agenda. All this fell on deaf ears - there were no public around except for the suits flowing in and out of the building. They all gave us very bemused looks, and some particularly smug ones laughed at us.

I wondered what would happen at this point, as it was a bit of a stand-off: the police were all standing around (about 20 of them, with about four cars and one truck: probably enough to subdue us if they needed to, and they looked like they weren't in a hurry to go anywhere and solve any crimes or anything), we were all standing around (rather at a loss for what to do next, and none of us with any bricks to throw), and the people in the building were sitting in their building unaware of our existence.

Eventually the communists with the megaphone decided we should head back to the university for some coffee [grown in the 3rd world for consumption in the 1st world - I wonder if the communists saw the irony]. They were a little worried at the lack of solidarity that this might seem to show, but we could all see that there was no ready target here to make an impression on.

So we headed back down Queen Street, stopping outside all the banks that we passed to "chant and wave placards" as the Herald put it in a small column on page four the next day. We also handed out a lot of flyers to people explaining how the World Bank creates 3rd world poverty. Of course, people never read stuff like that, and if they had I'm sure they would have thought it to be the ravings of crazed lunatics. It's safer for them not to know how the world really works.

Wellington managed nine arrests and the front page in The Dominion. Still, there's always next time to start the riot...

j-day @ albert park, auckland

2000-05-06T22:56:00.001+12:00

This was part of a worldwide protest against cannabis prohibition. I thought it was a good cause, and people I knew were going, so I headed down to Albert Park to meet them.

I came, I met, I sat down amongst the large crowd in front of the rotunda, I was shocked and disappointed to find out that none of the people I was with had a lighter. But anyway, we soon solved that problem and then we all sat around not talking and listening to the pretty music.

Jesse James & Sista Mystic were playing. They sounded pretty cool, I remember that much. Maybe they were Reggae, maybe something else. They had nice voices.

And then out of nowhere, I saw someone I recognised walking up to me. I couldn't for the life of me remember who they were. It was pretty damn trippy, and then I clicked. It was Danny from Daemon, and he was a long way from home.

He stopped and chatted with me about how he was on holiday here in Auckland; about how things in Nelson were pretty fucked up since the big drug-raid on Xanataph's place some time around New Year's; about how there might not even be a Nelsonian Black Metal Sabbat this year.

I still couldn't get over how trippy the whole situation was. And then King Kapisi came on stage. This guy was fucking hot. Him and his DJ were really blowing shit up when the sound cut out. But not to worry, they continued on, his DJ backing him up as a human beat-box. It was magical.

Then it started to get colder and darker, King Kapisi finished his set, and everyone took off home. And I had no choice but to go too. But you know, it was a pretty mellow day. I'm sure it didn't do anything to help the cause, but maybe one day...

counteract @ kings arms

2000-05-04T14:52:00.002+12:00

Well, the Anti-Kati boys invited me along to see Counteract because their friend Unique is in them. I decided that it might be fun to go out for once. So we turned up to this ridiculous pub, deliberately late enough not to have to see all the other bands on the bill. We pulled up some chairs near the front and waited. DJ D>Form and their other friends were all there.

Eventually they came on. It was ridiculous. They sounded like Korn. The bass player even played his bass down real low to the floor, just like the Korn bass player, especially once he broke his strap. We sat through this 90s metal for a while, then something fucked up with the bass amp or something, so we got treated to some accapella and some free-style from Unique. When they got going again he took off his shirt. This rammed the point home. Angry young white boys. Playing metal.

When it wound up we headed off to The Box for [regular club night] The Realness, but the hip-hop dancefloor was practically empty. I went home feeling more than a little cheated.

dancing in the streets

2000-03-23T22:45:00.001+12:00

We [me and Rorn] had cruised down to Wellington for some reason that I forget, and we ended up sitting in Cuba Mall, drinking with a large selection of our friends, and of course my sister's little chihuahua Miguel Sanchez. Miguel attracted lots of attention, especially from a crazy looking little child with blonde hair and blue eyes. I didn't know where she'd come from or where her parents were, but I decided to let her hold Miguel.

Then my sister pulls me aside and says "That little girl is a devil. Me and Rose were up in Central Park one day and her and her siblings were causing no end of trouble for us. We were just trying to have a quiet smoke and she kept coming up and saying stuff like 'I'm telling on you' and 'My brother said to say "Fuck you"' I tell you that little girl is a devil." Now, I know my sister isn't one to make these sort of things up, so I started keeping a very close eye on the little devil.

Anyway, Wellington being Wellington and all, there was some sort of festival or carnival going on, and presently the Wellington Carnival Street Band set up on the stage in Cuba Mall and started to play for us. It must have been about 17:00, and a large number of people were walking past: heading home from work or getting in some last-minute consuming before the shops shut. Everyone was rushing by, hardly pausing to appreciate the music.

So we got up and danced. We danced like people possessed. It was easy: they were playing an infectious set of horn-orientated samba and swing: the beats were funky and the groove was upbeat. We had not heard any of the songs before, except for the «Muppets» theme song, but it was some really cool shit.

As I danced to the free music and watched the busy busy people bustle by with no time to spare, I couldn't help think that here I was having free fun while the (capitalist) chains that hold them down give them no freedom and no fun. I came up with my new slogan: "fun will always be free!"

The little devil girl was running around, and so they gave her a small percussion instrument to keep her amused. And they let Sammy Vulture join in on her violin. It made me feel so happy to see that such things could go on even in the nasty big city. But of course eventually it had to end.

After that Sammy and me cruised down to see the installation/performance art piece Urban Dream Capsule, which involved four men living in the window of Farmers for 10 days or so. There was a small crowd watching them. Sammy soon made this a large crowd, because she whipped out her violin once again and started playing to the men. They started dancing to her music, causing the crowd to laugh.

When she had finished playing she tried to get some money off the crowd: afterall, she was busking. But the men in the window "tut-tuted" her, and so she got nothing for her efforts, which I thought was kind of sad, seeing as it's how she makes her living.

All the excitement was over, and the autumn evening was starting to get a bit chilly, so we left, our fun ended for the day. And hopefully someone who saw us dancing will have taken a little of that free spirit into their hearts.

one love festival @ point england reserve, panmure, auckland

2000-02-06T14:39:00.000+13:00

As we [me, Rorn, Billie and Stacy] drove out to Panmure there were lots of signs to follow: this was obviously an event of large proportions. When we finally got there, the streets were jammed with people and cars, all there to celebrate Bob Marley's birthday. Eventually we got to the gate, and they invited us to pay for car-parking. We did, and then drove around looking for the perfect spot.

Most of the spots under trees were taken, but we finally found one. We really needed it because our rats were living in the van at the time, and we really needed to have the rats in the shade while we were enjoying the festival, or they would have died. We went to drive over to the spot, but then one of the officials came up to us and said "Could you please park over there?" We explained the situation to him, but he said that he couldn't help us. You see, the spaces under the trees were reserved for handicapped parking only.

We looked at the cars parked under the trees. They were surrounded by large, healthy looking specimans of Polynesian manhood, presumably the people who'd got there early enough to get a park under the trees. The official's logic was completely bogus: the handicapped people had no more need to park under a tree than anyone else: afterall, they were going to spend the day at the festival, not sitting in the carpark. And the fact that the trees were on a hill that would probably have made egress to and from their vehicles more difficult for handicapped people.

So we parked where we were told and had a discussion amongst ourselves. We were angry at the officials, the whole thing seemed to have a very money-hungry bent, and everyone we'd seen there looked very unfriendly and most un-loving. So we said "fuck this shit" and took off, causing trouble by being about the only people going against the flow and trying to leave the place.

We went and had a lovely picnic together and then went to the beach. I think we got the better deal in the end.

Deaf Terrorists @ Indigo

2000-01-06T14:34:00.002+13:00

The first time I saw these guys was at a party, where there were about 50 people crammed into a little dark lounge entirely covered in black plastic. It was hot and loud; the crowd was slamming with the band as they played; they blew amps; someone collapsed, and as for the music: well, the drummer had drunk a 40-oz. of vodka and was playing about as slow as a dub drummer, but it still somehow worked. It was crazy, but maybe just because I was there with a schizophrenic who was tripping on peyote...

Anyway, I found out about this gig on the day, and a gold coin donation and something to do on a Wednesday night seemed like a good deal. Especially becuase they were the only band playing and I wouldn't have to sit through fuck-knows-what to wait to hear them play.

The gig starts. Right from the start it's total destruction. The band has an old photocopier on stage, and they start destroying it, and every one is jumping on stage helping them. They open some cans of creamed corn and start throwing it at the audience. The audience starts spitting back and everything starts flying and people are jumping everywhere and Dan from Fatal Error has the mic more than Blair does and everyone's yelling good-natured insults about people's mothers and through all this they're perhaps tighter than I've ever heard them, mainly because Little Dan is sober for once and is drumming up a storm [he just does this for fun, he's really destined to be a Jazz drummer].

And then about 40 energetic minutes later it's all over and everyone either migrates to the bar or goes home. And it's only about 10pm but I feel satisfied because it was practically free for all the entertainment I could wish for and I've had all the dancing and jumping I can handle. May Jesus smile on these guys and bless them with his goodness.

heavy metal apocalypse in the last days of the world feat. 2nd Nelsonian Black Metal Sabbat

2000-01-04T00:07:00.005+13:00

Late December 1999 saw us [myself, Natas and Rorn; collectively (pretending to be) a band called Fellator] pile into a van and take the ferry across to the South Island. Our destination was the sunny city of Nelson; our mission was the second Nelsonian Black Metal Sabbat. For all we knew it could of been the last: the end of the world was fast approaching.

We arrived late afternoon on the day before the Sabbat, and of course it was dead sunny, so we asked the Nelsonian Black Metal royalty where we could find a beach. Now, if you know anything about Black Metal, you'll know it's a totally beyond Gothic, death-worshiping, Satan-worshiping, beyond-extreme branch of Metal. Consequently the responses went something like "A beach?" - "I don't go near water. Not even to shower." - "Do you want to go kill some hippies?" . We flagged it and went and pitched camp up the Maitai Valley, a green area on the edge of town with a river running through it, where all the boy- and girl-racers come to meet and burn-out.

We woke up the next morning and had hours to burn: the Sabbat wasn't until 20:44 that evening, the exact time of the Summer Equinox: the descent into darkness. We spent the day in town, shopping and frying in the sun. Why is the sunniest place in New Zealand also the Black Metal capital? We paused to laugh at some little teenager with Korn shaved in the back of his head. It seems that there will yet be another generation of angry white boys into Metal.

We cruised up around 18:00 and found no-one at the site: kept deadly secret until the day of the event [and even then only given out to those in the know, or as a set of map co-ordinates on the internet] so as to avoid lots of people just coming for a look. Wouldn't want to scare an unsuspecting public: these Black Metallers are dangerous.

Eventually the PA people turned up and Natas played roadie as no-one else was around. The fans started straggling in around about 19:00, and a sorry bunch they were too. A couple of fat, unattractive Metalheads and a couple of worried looking little teenagers who'd bicycled to the remote Smiths Ford site near the top of the Maitai Valley. I think they wished they'd listened to their mothers and stayed away from that evil music.

Around about 20:44 some people came running up the road: it was Dead BC from Daemon and Agramon from Goatvomit. The about 10 people who'd gathered by this time ran back down the road with them to the scene of a rolled car, and we helped them move it off the road. They were all buzzing about their brush with death, and couldn't help but wonder at its timing.

After last year's late start Xanataph, the ringleader of the whole Nelson scene, had promised that this year everything would be on time. He finally rolled in at about 21:30, and in style befitting such a king: he was riding on the bonnet of a Kingy [Holden Kingswood]. The cheers went up from the assembled crowd as they knew that now they could finally get started.

It was probably heading to midnight when the first band started playing: Bloodwych were in fine form, displaying that they were metal gods with a 90-minute set of gratuitous Metal covers: Venom's Countess Bathory, Black Sabbath's NIB, Van Halen's Panama... It went on for a long time and wasn't too tight, but the small crowd was mainly made up of friends rather than curious new-comers needing to be won over, so it was accepted warmly.

In between sets we got DJ Nightmare 666, a goth from Wellington with a large Black Metal CD collection who kept the crowd warmed up with such favourites as Satyricon, Emperor and Ulver: including, shockingly, the rather progressive (for a Black Metal fan) trip-hop sounds of their latest album «Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell». Me and Natas went up and asked if he had any Celtic Frost or Sodom, but it seems that this guy wasn't as metal as he was posing as, and couldn't produce the hits from the 80s.

At this time the much anticipated set by Fellator was cancelled. We decided that we were too misanthropic [too Black Metal] to be bothered playing, and went to sleep instead. I did wake up for snatches of some of the other bands though: after all, it was suitably loud and I wasn't quite dead. A band I believe were called Bentari had some keyboards and a female vocalist and sounded very Gothic and not so Metal. There was also a jam session featuring Kez Bizarre with her dark poetry which I found even more trippy than last year even though this time I was sober. It infiltrated my sleep like a knife in my brain. I think it must have been about 05:00 when I woke up to Daemon making some noise. Somewhere in there I managed to miss Goatvomit, who Natas assured me where very fast and heavy and cut the Black Metal picture in a satisfying manner. Beltane, Xanataph's flagship Black Metal band unfortunately didn't play because their drummer didn't turn up.

As dawn came the fires were still burning and Apocalypse Now was showing on a projecter, although the light made it very hard to see and the sound wasn't too hot. The people who'd stayed all night started packing up; the police turned up to ask questions about the fire and the wrecked car and the general feeling was more of disappointment at all the fuck-ups than of the celebration I felt last year.

Since it was all over, me and Rorn got the hell out of Nelson and headed down to the West Coast. Boxing Day saw a pattern emerging that was to become all too familiar: we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. I hitched in to Westport to get some petrol. It was hard going to get a lift back, but suddenly I was saved. Out of nowhere came a black ute, and the driver stopped. He then proceded to drive me down the windy, narrow country roads at a ridiculous speed, all the while playing Guns n' Roses «Appetite for Destruction» at a loud volume. Such Metal things just don't happen to me anymore.

A few days later and the bud situation was getting desperate, so we headed back to Nelson. By this time Ramelia had arrived in Nelson, so we hung out with her and Natas. We were sitting around in town when suddenly this black Valient pulls up and six giant rednecks get out of it. Painted on their car were the words "Sloppy Hole Patrol Y2K Tour" and then their names [stuff like Macca and Dazza]. We were rather offended at such sexist and ridiculous redneck behaviour, so we chose the choicest pictures out of a gay porn magazine that we happened to have lying around and stuck them to the windows of their car. We then sat back and laughed at the reactions of all the rather conservative locals as they stopped to look and then realised with horror what the pictures were. Eventually one of the rednecks came back to the car and ripped the pictures off: throwing them inside the car for later viewing. We laughed.

Ramelia was in town for The Gathering, so the day before it we took her out to Takaka. On the way we picked up some hitch-hikers. The first two were a couple of resourceful lads who were planning to hike into The Gathering the back way: a good way to avoid paying for the $100 ticket, but requiring a good knowledge of the hill-country surrounding The Gathering site and the willingness to hike for the best part of a day through some harsh terrain.

When we stopped for the next one, it seemed like we may have made a mistake. This guy seemed really drunk. But then we saw the tell-tale look in his eyes and realised that he was wasted on opiates. He proceded to show us the large bag of pills that he was carrying around with him and made some really typically confusing conversation.

We dropped them off somewhere and then looked for a place to stop for the night. People were camped everywhere along the side of the road and in every park and reserve we passed. Eventually we settled on the rather amusingly named Pu Pu Springs, and set about drinking the mini-keg that we'd liberated earlier in the day. This led to a rather amusing scene with some German tourists a few hours later...

We woke up in the morning and didn't leave early enough. Consequently we ended up in the traffic jam on the top of the Takaka Hill. There we ended up parked beside an emu farm. One guy got out of his car and went over to pet them. He got bitten. Nastily. We turned the Madonna tape up louder and waited. Luckily we'd come early enough to only have to wait about half an hour. As we got to the gate of The Gathering we came upon our old friend Bernard: The Gathering afterall being run by The McGillicuddy Serious Party, a political party of very sensible and fun-loving quasi-anarchists that Rorn was a candidate for at the last election.

As we cruised down the other side of the hill and looked at all the people stuck in the kilometres of traffic jam, we were glad we weren't going. Most of the people were dressed conservatively and expensively: an indication of how mainstream and commercial this event has become. We laughed at the people sitting in the traffic jam in taxi-vans, their meters ticking. It all just seemed a little ridiculous, and we were glad to be away.

At a bit of a loss, we eventually found ourselves at Smiths Ford, and decided to spend New Year's there. There was not another person there, and no sign of civilisation at all. We were completely alone and isolated. It was quite a magical atmosphere: not knowing whether it was all going to go down in flames or not.
It wasn't until around noon the next day when a vehicle drove past that we decided that we hadn't been lucky enough to be the only ones left on earth. Still, there's still hope eh?

Bass Frontiers 07: D.Tour, Sean, Pixie, Conspiracy @ Studio 9, Wellington

1999-10-02T00:03:00.002+12:00

This was the first drum'n'bass gig I'd ever been to, and I was only going because I'd won a free ticket. Me and Natas and some girls cruised into this at the quite fashionable hour of 02:30. Studio 9 is a small hot dark venue and there must have been a couple of hundred people packed in there under the strobes dancing like maniacs to really loud drum'n'bass.

I slipped into the groove and started dancing, down the front. Some of the mixing wasn't too smooth, but the small few second pauses between each track were welcome reliefs.
Some of the DJs started throwing in rather prolonged atmospheric bits in between the breakbeats, which started cutting the dancing up rather annoyingly, but hey, maybe I was a little too manic for the fact it was 05:00 in the morning [if you've got the staying power the dance-floor really starts clearing out about that hour and you can go nuts].

All in all a welcome introduction to drum'n'bass.

Impaled Nazerene, Malevolence, Beltane, Monsterworks @ Indigo, Wellington, August 1999

1999-08-06T23:58:00.006+12:00

The opening riffs of the first band sounded like Pantera or something equally 90s, so me and the Beltane boys went back home for some spots. Then we rushed back in time for their set, which even though it was tighter than the night before and quite magnificent, only encouraged me and some other drunken bogan up the front.
When Malevolence started up the Beltane boys disappeared for some more spots, but I stayed on and the local Hardcore Punks all got up as well. Daryl was in fine form and they generally went off even though the crowd wasn't too appreciative.

Finally it was time for Impaled Nazarene, and they burst on stage to a great reception. Suddenly everyone was up the front, and unlike some of the other bogan gigs around, everyone was having fun instead of being violent - I guess it was the Punk contingent that was there. I thought I was the most metal guy there in my cut-off denim jacket and bullet-belt and spiked guantlets, but it turned out that the guy with the Emperor logo tattooed across his shoulders beat me hands down. What a legend, eh? Their set was dynamite - nice and tight and with Mika in fine form. Burst Command 'Til War was unrecognised by the crowd as I had predicted, but I went fuckin' nuts and screamed along and it was all worth it.

After the gig Mika and the rest of the band were swarmed by a horde of girls, and I hear that he succeeded in his mission to get some groupies.

Impaled Nazarene interview

1999-08-06T23:50:00.002+12:00

As Impaled Nazarene, a legendary Finnish Black Metal band, rolled into town I rang up the tour promoter [Chris Rigby/Subcide Productions] and an hour later I was sitting in the bar of the joint where they were staying buying Mika [the vocalist] a beer. By amazing luck there was a power socket at our table, so I plugged in and started up:

So, why are you making music?
Because it's a fucking good way to see the world and get laid.

What's the goal of Impaled Nazarene?
Well, the next goal... this year the «Rapture» Tour has taken us to lots of places... nowadays our goal is just to travel around as much as possible. So we have been to Ireland where we didn't do before. We have been to Ireland, Russia, Japan, two times Mexico, USA, Canada. So we have crossed all these places. Finally Australia, New Zealand. We have been trying to get this fucking tour for four years already, but we have been dealing with completely unprofessional bullshit companies that just don't have the resources to do it.

So what was your goal when you started out?
We didn't have any. Absolutely nothing. We just wanted to make music. Then when we got the record deal we started the touring. After that we have played like fucking five tours in Europe we were like "We have to get the fuck out of here". We have seen all the fucking clubs, all the places, all the time the same people coming to see you, so we just had to see new countries just fuck off from Europe. Europe is shit anyway.

Do you want to save the planet or destroy it?
I don't care anymore. I don't really care anymore.

Are you going to play «Burst Command 'Til War» [a cover of a Sodom song: German Speed Metal from the 80s] tonight?
Yes.
Would you be surprised if I told you probably not a lot of the crowd will know it?
That's why we play. We do it on purpose and we don't announce it. We play [didn't catch the song title] and from [that song] we continue directly to «Burst Command 'Til War». And every evening the reactions are like "What the hell is this?".
A lot of people here weren't into all that stuff.Well, perhaps we can turn them into it. Sounds like Impaled song anyway.

OK, what do you think of Electronic music?
I don't care. I used to do the Diabolus Rising you know, but I just lost interest. It sounds all the same to me.

What do you think of the way Metal is heading?
I don't how it's here, but in Europe it's the Power Metal is the biggest trend at the moment. Everyone's into the Power Metal or the Gothic. That fucking weeping Gothic shit which I cannot stand. They are all poofters.
So you're not going to try and get out of Metal like some of the Norwegians are now?
What?
Some of the Norwegian bands, like Ulver are stopping playing Metal and doing something else. Are you going to be doing that?
Ulver can stick their fucking heads in their arses for all I care.

Hahaha. OK, are you happy that Bruce Dickinson is back in Iron Maiden?
Yeah. But I am fucking sad that when we are recording our new CD that they are playing in Paris and because I live in Belgium I could have gone to see them. Fucking first show of that tour, so I was fucked. I should cancel the studio because of that.

Do you eat cheese?
Yes.
What's your favourite cheese?
What fucking kind of question's that? My favourite is the [didn't catch that either] which is a Northern France excellent cheese.

What do you think: you've seen quite a bit of the world: what do you think about racism?
I don't give a shit. I have no opinion on that. People can be whatever they want to as long as they don't rub it to my face. We had Nazi skinheads at the Dunedin show here throwing bottles at us or whatever.

Are you going to go to Hell?
I am in Hell already. Life is Hell.

Do you get many groupies, or do you actually have a wife hidden back in Finland that no one knows about?
Whatever happens on tour happens on tour, that's it. Australia was great and New Zealand has been shit so far.

What are your favourite drugs?
[Detroxapam or something that sounds like that] with whisky. That's a muscle relaxant that works like a dope bud. If you mix it with the whisky and take a couple of tablets you are fucked completely for like 14 hours. That's the best drug there is.

What's the craziest gig you ever did?
Our first show in Tokyo this March. The audience.. we have never to such a wild audience it was completely crazy. We had the guy from Osmose Productions, Herve, the owner, he was in the show. When we started playing he took away all his clothes except his jeans and he started spitting on me directly to my mouth and screaming. He jumped on the stage and kicked my arse, so I just fucking kicked his arse and I started to spit back and he kept coming on stage and spitting on me and hitting me and everybody was trashed. That was a very cool show. I would like to see someone from Century Media to go when [some band on their roster which I didn't catch] is playing and go [un-transcribable violent sound-effects]

Have you ever been afraid that you might die while you're touring?
I've already seen so much shit. I have seen so much shit and I have done my own adventures while on tour. And I'm pretty much separated from the other guys nowadays I just go my own way. So if I die today I would be happy I've seen so much stuff.
So you weren't afraid at any time, or...?
No.

Are you paranoid about the government? Like conspiracies and stuff?
Well, I know for a fact that my phone is tapped. And so is our bass player's. We were talking one Friday night on the phone and there was all the time this static like "krrrr". So he says in Finnish "Do you hear this? This phone is being tapped". And at that moment the connection was lost immediately like "do do do". So I ring him again. I said "Do you realise what happened?" and then it was clear. We caught them like the fucking truth. Nowadays when we start phone conversations we tell them to fuck off like "Fuck off State Security. Go to Hell. We want to talk alone". And I have been followed, I know.
That's terrible.
Well, at some point you know, when all kinds of shit happened inside Black Metal scene, it affected of course people like us. We are black listed somewhere. They have a fucking document about that, they have a list of all the people who can be listed as suspicious.
Did the police come and interview you and stuff?
No, because we haven't done anything illegal, so why would they do that?
Did you actually know Euronymous and people like that?
Not personally. I was in contact with him, yeah, but... I got his last letter four days before he died, or was killed.

What's the strangest thing you ever ate?
Ate? Is this a kooky magazine or what?
Yeah, it's a bit strange.
Strangest thing I ever ate? We did this show in East Germany. I don't remember the name of the willage, but there was a pub where we played and exactly 12 houses. They cooked us something. They were wegetables which I today still don't have a fucking clue what it was. I didn't eat it because... We have seen some horrible food. In Mexico we have eaten some things that we don't even know what they were, but we were hungry. We didn't have a choice. Kangaroo was cool. I liked kangaroo it tasted like bull.

How well did you do at school? Have you got like a good education?
I don't really want to answer questions like that. I prefer to keep my personal life pretty secret, because I have learned that the more open you are in interviews, the more people have to backstab you. So I'm not only being paranoid about the government, I'm paranoid about everybody. It's healthy. It's healthy to be paranoid.

Do you play any sports?
Well, if wanking is considered sport, yes.

Would you say you're still a Black Metal band, or are you getting sick of people calling you that?
People can call us whatever. We don't care. You know, it's Extreme Metal. Can you call Emperor a Black Metal band anymore? I don't think so. They have so much in their music. It's good, it's expanding. It makes things sound more interesting when you are not just sounding like a pure Black Metal band when you take other influences.

Have you seen anything in New Zealand so far that you think's pretty strange?
Well, I'll tell you one thing. The whole Dunedin: [holds up his hands] do you know what this is?
No.
Nine fingers. I tell you that the whole Dunedin is nine fingers inbred. Fucking society where the brother and the dad are married to their sisters.
Yeah, I know. I used to live down there.
We played our show. We wanted to get the fuck out of there. Let's disappear from here forever. We have done shows for 152 gigs in 24 different countries and that's the first fucking show we have ever done ever actually that and a show in Mexico in a place called [didn't catch the name] where they didn't have nine fingers, they had seven. They were even more retarded there. Fucking apes.

What are you planning for New Year's? The millennium party?
I will go to Las Vagas to gamble my money. That's what I have decided. I have always wanted to go there and I need to go to a place where it's going to be so huge and I know that Las Vagas is the entertainment centre of the world, so I'll be singing Elvis classics in the kareoke.

What's the best place you've been to so far?
You mean in New Zealand or the whole world?
The world.
Australia. Australia for us, but for me personally there's three: the whole Australia; Tokyo: actually the whole Japan: I love the Japanese culture; and then Canada: Montreal, especially the Montreal main street. It's my dream town. In the main street you have strip-club, Metal shop, bar, strip-club, Metal shop, bar. You have hookers and then you have all sorts of glue-sniffers out there, fucking bikers and stuff. I was there like "This is my dream place". It's beautiful town. And I like the Canadians. They are totally different from the people from the States.

Do you like Star Wars?
Of course. I fucking grew up on it, so.. It's my all-time favourite movie «Empire Strikes Back». I've seen it fucking 35 times or something. But I'll never get enough of it.
Have you seen the new movie yet?
It only opens by the end of August where we live, so... We wanted to see it in Australia but we didn't have a chance. But I don't think that it's a good, because they have a children playing. That's fucking moronic.

You're the first Scandinavian band to come over here. Do you see that as much of an achievement?
I'm fucking proud of that. I know for a fact that of any type of music, even Classical music or whatever, that we are the first ever Finnish band to play in New Zealand. Us! That's why we said in the interviews in Finland when we left we were like "Fuck off. We are going to New Zealand. Show us any other artist who have done that". And also like, if you compare to other bands usually other bands in Australia do like three shows or something and then it's only Auckland here and we did eight in Australia, four in New Zealand. I don't know, but it always happens to us that way. Also in Mexico, they told us we are the only international band ever to play in eight different towns. Usually the bands fly in, play Mexico City, fly out. We have done two tours, two two-week tours there touring the whole fucking country. We have been very lucky. We have seen so much shit that I should write a book about it. I've been thinking that it would be a very weird stories to tell.

What has the response been like in New Zealand so far to your band?
Well, in Dunedin it was total shit. And yesterday it was, after Melbourne, it was the best show we have done on this trip. Christchurch just ruled. It was fucking intense. People were totally into it. It was nice. So I hope that tonight it will be even better.

Do you think that short hair has a place in Metal? [I read this question rather timidly, because Mika has a shaved head]
Is this a trick question or what?
Um, no. I really didn't know that you had no hair.
I think so. I don't care. You can look whatever you like. In Japan we played our first show in [didn't catch the name]. 75% of the audience was women. None of them were Metal chicks. They came with the nice dresses and shit like that. With the guys there was one guy with a Metal shirt and everyone else was with the suit and tie. They looked like [puts on mock-Japanese voice] "I come directly from the work". And we were there like "Do you even know us?" They were like "We like Impaled. You are very good" . It was cool. So, I don't care. You can look whatever you like. If you like Metal, that's enough for me. I'm sick and tired of what we call the East German look that you have to have 20,000 tons of fucking spikes and bullet-belts before you are so-called Metal. I don't care about it anymore.

Beltane @ Indigo, Wellington

1999-08-05T23:47:00.001+12:00

This was a warm-up gig for Beltane, who had come up from Nelson to support Impaled Nazerene the next night. I turned up just before their set, having missed all the support acts in the name of money [day-jobs suck]. They were in pretty good form, but they were playing to only about 20 people, as the promotion had been shocking. I guess it's a pretty good reflection on the state of Black Metal in this country.
They turned it on for them though, and I had a lot of fun.

1st Nelsonian Black Metal Sabbat: Daemon, The Adversary, Beltane @ Smiths Ford, Maitai Valley, Nelson

1998-12-22T23:38:00.002+13:00

This was the first in what is hoped to be an annual event. As twilight started to fall we arrived at the venue, which was a large natural bowl which provided a really cool atmosphere. The crowd was very small and consisted only of local insiders, because the flyers had only been produced 24 hours before the gig. No one was worried about this however as the alcohol started to flow.

The bands had hoped to get underway at 20:42, as this was the exact time of the Solstice, and that is what this event was celebrating. However, it wasn't until about 22:00 and daylight was totally fading that Beltane finally took the stage, after an opening invocation by vocalist/guitarist Xanataph. They played a set of rather melodic and atmospheric Black Metal, which the locals didn't really get into at all.

Next up was a dark jam session featuring Kez screeching her dark poetry over the distorted guitar of Xanataph and the drumming of the Beltane drummer. The sound rolled around the valley quite impressively and was very evil.

At about midnight The Adversary was finally ready to hit the stage, and they played a very dark and technical Death Metal, which finally got a drunken fan up the front. In every pause between the songs he yelled about how he had only come to see The Adversary, not some hippie folk shit, which didn't exactly endear him to everyone who had enjoyed the previous set. At the conclusion of the set a drunken red-neck pulled a large gun out of his pick-up truck and let a few rounds off into the sky. We were quite relieved when this brought absolutely no attention to our gathering.

It must have been about 02:00 when Daemon finally picked up their instruments, and by that time most of them were stoned and tripping. Giles the maniac pyromaniac ran around keeping the torches alight as the band played. Towards the end of the set Xanataph went to light a cross that they had constructed, but it burst into flames rather completely and he danced dangerously and rather wasted through the flames, while the more sober around the place tried to get all the leads out of the fire.

That was about the end of things, but we stayed on, because the PA system was perfect for sitting around really stoned and listening to Darkthrone and Mayhem on - about the closest you can get to seeing them live in this part of the world.

brutal truth, malevolence, denial, fatal error @ indigo, wellington

1998-09-15T23:31:00.003+12:00

Me and Natas missed Fatal Error because at that time we were still at my house drinking vodka and listening to such Thrash Metal classics as «Whiplash» and seeing as we were seeing Brutal Truth, «Metal Thrashing Mad». But I've seen them before and they're a Hardcore Punk band who at some stage each set yell "Black Metal!" and then plough into something the same as the rest of their songs only with more screaming than yelling for the vocals.

Anyway, it was raining, so we got rather soaked as we ambled down to Indigo, causing me to ponder whether or not my bullet-belt would get rusty (it seems it hasn't). We climbed the stairs and found ourselves in a dodgy bar filled with bogans and skinheads in Cannibal Corpse and Deicide shirts. Quite as expected really. I felt quite conspicuous in my bullet-belt, Iron Maiden T-shirt and denim jacket (sans sleeves) with the Anthrax back-patch.

Denial came on and started to play their Cannibal Corpse-styled Death Metal, and we stood lamenting how far behind the trend the New Zealand extreme Metal scene is. The vocalist yelled "Here's one you'll all know!" and I think most of the crowd did, but I needed Natas to inform me that it was «Hammer Smashed Face» by Cannibal Corpse.

Malevolence were down from Auckland to play, and they played some heavy music which wasn't very memorable but had Punk influence and Black Metal vocals, and finally managed to get some of the crowd down to the front of the stage. It was at this point that I realised how sober I was and wished I'd either had a lot more vodka or wasn't at some skody bar with a bunch of bogans listening to shitty bands whose songs all sound the same (Jesus, even Darkthrone have a little melody and can write riffs that are distinctive).

Anyway, Brutal Truth finally came out, the vocalist in a ridiculous cowboy hat - at least they had also entered into some spirit of fun this evening, unlike most of the patrons who were just here because they live for blast-beats and alcohol (not necessarily a bad thing, but hardly an intelligent lifestyle choice).

Me and Natas got down the front, where I proceeded to yell such banal things as "Anthrax!" and "Metal Thrashing Mad!" whenever I thought Dan was listening. The bastards didn't play either of these things, but they did do what they claimed was a Slayer cover - I don't know because it sounded quite similar to the rest of the set and I was only a couple of feet away from the vocalist at the time and consequently couldn't hear the lyrics.

But everyone had a good time and a good mosh anyway - mainly because the large drunken skinheads stayed at the bar and so everyone was safe (unlike some other gigs I've been to). As for the "Black Metal Elite" (read: 17 year old kids with shoulder-length hair in Dimmu Borgir and Emperor shirts), they stood at the side of the stage watching the drummer's heroic single-kick action and being "too cool to mosh".

When the band disappeared from the stage, and came back for a few more songs, and went again, I noticed a member of local Black Metal band Defiled Symphony and tried to tell him he should get in contact with my 'zine, but he was so drunk all he could say was "my band are fucking awesome" over and over again. I guess he'll go far in the underground.